Chapter II: Part 2

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.

"Just what is your plan?" asked Taylor, quite as if he did not know.

"Why, man, the transfer of a hundred millions of stock would give me control of the cotton-mills of America. Think of it!--the biggest trust next to steel."

"Why not bigger?" asked Taylor, imperturbably puffing away. Mr. Easterly eyed him. He had regarded Taylor hitherto as a very valuable asset to the business--had relied on his knowledge of routine, his judgment and his honesty; but he detected tonight a new tone in his clerk, something almost authoritative and self-reliant. He paused and smiled at him.

"Bigger?"

But John Taylor was dead in earnest. He did not smile.

"First, there's England--and all Europe; why not bring them into the trust?"

"Possibly, later; but first, America. Of course, I've got my eyes on the European situation and feelers out; but such matters are more difficult and slower of adjustment over there--so damned much law and gospel."

"But there's another side."

"What's that?"

"You are planning to combine and control the manufacture of cotton--"

"Yes."

"But how about your raw material? The steel trust owns its iron mines."

"Of course--mines could be monopolized and hold the trust up; but our raw material is perfectly safe--farms growing smaller, farms isolated, and we fixing the price. It's a cinch."

"Are you sure?" Taylor surveyed him with a narrowed look.

"Certain."

"I'm not. I've been looking up things, and there are three points you'd better study: First, cotton farms are not getting smaller; they're getting bigger almighty fast, and there's a big cotton-land monopoly in sight. Second, the banks and wholesale houses in the South _can_ control the cotton output if they work together. Third, watch the Southern 'Farmers' League' of big landlords."

Mr. Easterly threw away his cigar and sat down. Taylor straightened up, switched on the porch light, and took a bundle of papers from his coat pocket.

"Here are census figures," he said, "commercial reports and letters." They pored over them a half hour. Then Easterly arose.

"There's something in it," he admitted, "but what can we do? What do you propose?"

"Monopolize the growth as well as the manufacture of cotton, and use the first to club European manufacturers into submission."

Easterly stared at him.

"Good Lord!" he ejaculated; "you're crazy!"

But Taylor smiled a slow, thin smile, and put away his papers. Easterly continued to stare at his subordinate with a sort of fascination, with the awe that one feels when genius unexpectedly reveals itself from a source hitherto regarded as entirely ordinary. At last he drew a long breath, remarking indefinitely:

"I'll think it over."

A stir in the parlor indicated departure.

"Well, you watch the Farmers' League, and note its success and methods," counselled John Taylor, his tone and manner unchanged. "Then figure what it might do in the hands of--let us say, friends."

"Who's running it?"

"A Colonel Cresswell is its head, and happens also to be the force behind it. Aristocratic family--big planter--near where my sister teaches."

"H'm--well, we'll watch _him_."

"And say," as Easterly was turning away, "you know Congressman Smith?"

"I should say I did."

"Well, Mrs. Grey seems to be depending on him for advice in distributing some of her charity funds."

Easterly appeared startled.

"She is, is she!" he exclaimed. "But here come the ladies." He went forward at once, but John Taylor drew back. He noted Mrs. Vanderpool, and thought her too thin and pale. The dashing young Miss Easterly was more to his taste. He intended to have a wife like that one of these days.

"Mary," said he to his sister as he finally rose to go, "tell me about the Cresswells."

Mary explained to him at length the impossibility of her knowing much about the local white aristocracy of Tooms County, and then told him all she had heard.

"Mrs. Grey talked to you much?"

"Yes."

"About darky schools?"

"Yes."

"What does she intend to do?"

"I think she will aid Miss Smith first."

"Did you suggest anything?"

"Well, I told her what I thought about cooeperating with the local white people."

"The Cresswells?"

"Yes--you see Mrs. Vanderpool knows the Cresswells."

"Does, eh? Good! Say, that's a good point. You just bear heavy on it--cooeperate with the Cresswells."

"Why, yes. But--you see, John, I don't just know whether one _could_ cooeperate with the Cresswells or not--one hears such contradictory stories of them. But there must be some other white people--"

"Stuff! It's the Cresswells we want."

"Well," Mary was very dubious, "they are--the most important."

_Seven_

THE PLACE OF DREAMS

When she went South late in September, Mary Taylor had two definite but allied objects: she was to get all possible business information concerning the Cresswells, and she was to induce Miss Smith to prepare for Mrs. Grey's benevolence by interesting the local whites in her work. The programme attracted Miss Taylor. She felt in touch, even if dimly and slightly, with great industrial movements, and she felt, too, like a discerning pioneer in philanthropy. Both roles she liked. Besides, they held, each, certain promises of social prestige; and society, Miss Taylor argued, one must have even in Alabama.

Bles Alwyn met her at the train. He was growing to be a big fine bronze giant, and Mary was glad to see him. She especially tried, in the first few weeks of opening school, to glean as much information as possible concerning the community, and particularly the Cresswells. She found the Negro youth quicker, surer, and more intelligent in his answers than those she questioned elsewhere, and she gained real enjoyment from her long talks with him.

"Isn't Bles developing splendidly?" she said to Miss Smith one afternoon. There was an unmistakable note of enthusiasm in her voice. Miss Smith slowly closed her letter-file but did not look up.

"Yes," she said crisply. "He's eighteen now--quite a man."

"And most interesting to talk with."

"H'm--very"--drily. Mary was busy with her own thoughts, and she did not notice the other woman's manner.

"Do you know," she pursued, "I'm a little afraid of one thing."

"So am I."

"Oh, you've noted it, too?--his friendship for that impossible girl, Zora?"

Miss Smith gave her a searching look.

"What of it?" she demanded.

"She is so far beneath him."

"How so?"

"She is a bold, godless thing; I don't understand her."

"The two are not quite the same."

"Of course not; but she is unnaturally forward."

"Too bright," Miss Smith amplified.

"Yes; she knows quite too much. You surely remember that awful scarlet dress? Well, all her clothes have arrived, or remained, at a simplicity and vividness that is--well--immodest."

"Does she think them immodest?"

"What she thinks is a problem."

"_The_ problem, you mean?"

"Well, yes."

They paused a moment. Then Miss Smith said slowly: "What I don't understand, I don't judge."

"No, but you can't always help seeing and meeting it," laughed Miss Taylor.

"Certainly not. I don't try; I court the meeting and seeing. It is the only way."

"Well, perhaps, for us--but not for a boy like Bles, and a girl like Zora."

"True; men and women must exercise judgment in their intercourse and"--she glanced sharply at Miss Taylor--"my dear, you yourself must not forget that Bles Alwyn is a man."

Far up the road came a low, long, musical shouting; then with creaking and straining of wagons, four great black mules dashed into sight with twelve bursting bales of yellowish cotton looming and swaying behind. The drivers and helpers were lolling and laughing and singing, but Miss Taylor did not hear nor see. She had sat suddenly upright; her face had flamed crimson, and then went dead white.

"Miss--Miss Smith!" she gasped, overwhelmed with dismay, a picture of wounded pride and consternation.

Miss Smith turned around very methodically and took her hand; but while she spoke the girl merely stared at her in stony silence.

"Now, dear, don't mean more than I do. I'm an old woman, and I've seen many things. This is but a little corner of the world, and yet many people pass here in thirty years. The trouble with new teachers who come is, that like you, they cannot see black folk as human. All to them are either impossible Zoras, or else lovable Blessings. They forget that Zora is not to be annihilated, but studied and understood, and that Bles is a young man of eighteen and not a clod."

"But that he should dare--" Mary began breathlessly.

"He hasn't dared," Miss Smith went gently on. "No thought of you but as a teacher has yet entered his dear, simple head. But, my point is simply this: he's a man, and a human one, and if you keep on making much over him, and talking to him and petting him, he'll have the right to interpret your manner in his own way--the same that any young man would."

"But--but, he's a--a--"

"A Negro. To be sure, he is; and a man in addition. Now, dear, don't take this too much to heart; this is not a rebuke, but a clumsy warning. I am simply trying to make clear to you _why_ you should be careful. Treat poor Zora a little more lovingly, and Bles a little less warmly. They are just human--but, oh! so human."

Mary Taylor rose up stiffly and mumbled a brief good-night. She went to her room, and sat down in the dark. The mere mention of the thing was to her so preposterous--no, loathsome, she kept repeating.

She slowly undressed in the dark, and heard the rumbling of the cotton wagons as they swayed toward town. The cry of the Naked was sweeping the world, and yonder in the night black men were answering the call. They knew not what or why they answered, but obeyed the irresistible call, with hearts light and song upon their lips--the Song of Service. They lashed their mules and drank their whiskey, and all night the piled fleece swept by Mary Taylor's window, flying--flying to that far cry. Miss Taylor turned uneasily in her bed and jerked the bed-clothes about her ears.

"Mrs. Vanderpool is right," she confided to the night, with something of the awe with which one suddenly comprehends a hidden oracle; "there must be a difference, always, always! That impudent Negro!"

All night she dreamed, and all day,--especially when trim and immaculate she sat in her chair and looked down upon fifty dark faces--and upon Zora.

Zora sat thinking. She saw neither Miss Taylor nor the long straight rows of desks and faces. She heard neither the drone of the spellers nor did she hear Miss Taylor say, "Zora!" She heard and saw none of this. She only heard the prattle of the birds in the wood, far down where the Silver Fleece would be planted.

For the time of cotton-planting was coming; the gray and drizzle of December was past and the hesitation, of January. Already a certain warmth and glow had stolen into the air, and the Swamp was calling its child with low, seductive voice. She knew where the first leaves were bursting, where tiny flowers nestled, and where young living things looked upward to the light and cried and crawled. A wistful longing was stealing into her heart. She wanted to be free. She wanted to run and dance and sing, but Bles wanted--

"Zora!"

This time she heard the call, but did not heed it. Miss Taylor was very tiresome, and was forever doing and saying silly things. So Zora paid no attention, but sat still and thought. Yes, she would show Bles the place that very night; she had kept it secret from him until now, out of perverseness, out of her love of mystery and secrets. But tonight, after school, when he met her on the big road with the clothes, she would take him and show him the chosen spot.

Soon she was aware that school had been dismissed, and she leisurely gathered up her books and rose. Mary Taylor regarded her in perplexed despair. Oh, these people! Mrs. Vanderpool was right: culture and--some masses, at least--were not to be linked; and, too, culture and work--were they incompatible? At any rate, culture and _this_ work were.

Now, there was Mrs. Vanderpool--she toiled not, neither did she spin, and yet! If all these folk were like poor, stupid, docile Jennie it would be simpler, but what earthly sense was there in trying do to anything with a girl like Zora, so stupid in some matters, so startlingly bright in others, and so stubborn in everything? Here, she was doing some work twice as well and twice as fast as the class, and other work she would not touch because she "didn't like it." Her classification in school was nearly as difficult as her classification in the world, and Miss Taylor reached up impatiently and removed the gold pin from her stock to adjust it more comfortably when Zora sauntered past unseeing, unheeding, with that curious gliding walk which Miss Taylor called stealthy. She laid the pin on the desk and on sudden impulse spoke again to the girl as she arranged her neck trimmings.

"Zora," she said evenly, "why didn't you come to class when I called?"

"I didn't hear you," said Zora, looking at her full-eyed and telling the half-truth easily.

Miss Taylor was sure Zora was lying, and she knew that she had lied to her on other occasions. Indeed, she had found lying customary in this community, and she had a New England horror of it. She looked at Zora disapprovingly, while Zora looked at her quite impersonally, but steadily. Then Miss Taylor braced herself, mentally, and took the war into Africa.

"Do you ever tell lies, Zora?"

"Yes."

"Don't you know that is a wicked, bad habit?"

"Why?"

"Because God hates them."

"How does _you_ know He does?" Zora's tone was still impersonal.

"He hates all evil."

"But why is lies evil?"

"Because they make us deceive each other."

"Is that wrong?"

"Yes."

Zora bent forward and looked squarely into Miss Taylor's blue eyes. Miss Taylor looked into the velvet blackness of hers and wondered what they veiled.

"Is it wrong," asked Zora, "to make believe you likes people when you don't, when you'se afeared of them and thinks they may rub off and dirty you?"

"Why--why--yes, if you--if you, deceive."

"Then you lies sometimes, don't you?"

Miss Taylor stared helplessly at the solemn eyes that seemed to look so deeply into her.

"Perhaps--I do, Zora; I'm sure I don't mean to, and--I hope God will forgive me."

Zora softened.

"Oh, I reckon He will if He's a good God, because He'd know that lies like that are heaps better than blabbing the truth right out. Only," she added severely, "you mustn't keep saying it's wicked to lie 'cause it ain't. Sometimes I lies," she reflected pensively, "and sometimes I don't--it depends."

Miss Taylor forgot her collar, and fingered the pin on the desk. She felt at once a desperate desire to know this girl better and to establish her own authority. Yet how should she do it? She kept toying with the pin, and Zora watched her. Then Miss Taylor said, absently:

"Zora, what do you propose to do when you grow up?"

Zora considered.

"Think and walk--and rest," she concluded.

"I mean, what work?"

"Work? Oh, I sha'n't work. I don't like work--do you?"

Miss Taylor winced, wondering if the girl were lying again. She said quickly:

"Why, yes--that is, I like some kinds of work."

"What kinds?"

But Miss Taylor refused to have the matter made personal, as Zora had a disconcerting way of pointing all their discussions.

"Everybody likes some kinds of work," she insisted.

"If you likes it, it ain't work," declared Zora; but Mary Taylor proceeded around her circumscribed circle:

"You might make a good cook, or a maid."

"I hate cooking. What's a maid?"

"Why, a woman who helps others."

"Helps folks that they love? I'd like that."

"It is not a question of affection," said Miss Taylor, firmly: "one is paid for it."

"I wouldn't work for pay."

"But you'll have to, child; you'll have to earn a living."

"Do you work for pay?"

"I work to earn a living."

"Same thing, I reckon, and it ain't true. Living just comes free, like--like sunshine."

"Stuff! Zora, your people must learn to work and work steadily and work hard--" She stopped, for she was sure Zora was not listening; the far away look was in her eyes and they were shining. She was beautiful as she stood there--strangely, almost uncannily, but startlingly beautiful with her rich dark skin, softly moulded features, and wonderful eyes.

"My people?--my people?" she murmured, half to herself. "Do you know my people? They don't never work; they plays. They is all little, funny dark people. They flies and creeps and crawls, slippery-like; and they cries and calls. Ah, my people! my poor little people! they misses me these days, because they is shadowy things that sing and smell and bloom in dark and terrible nights--"

Miss Taylor started up. "Zora, I believe you're crazy!" she cried. But Zora was looking at her calmly again.

"We'se both crazy, ain't we?" she returned, with a simplicity that left the teacher helpless.

Miss Taylor hurried out, forgetting her pin. Zora looked it over leisurely, and tried it on. She decided that she liked it, and putting it in her pocket, went out too.

School was out but the sun was still high, as Bles hurried from the barn up the big road beside the soft shadows of the swamp. His head was busy with new thoughts and his lips were whistling merrily, for today Zora was to show him the long dreamed of spot for the planting of the Silver Fleece. He hastened toward the Cresswell mansion, and glanced anxiously up the road. At last he saw her coming, swinging down the road, lithe and dark, with the big white basket of clothes poised on her head.

"Zora," he yodled, and she waved her apron.

He eased her burden to the ground and they sat down together, he nervous and eager; she silent, passive, but her eyes restless. Bles was full of his plans.

"Zora," he said, "we'll make it the finest bale ever raised in Tooms; we'll just work it to the inch--just love it into life."

She considered the matter intently.

"But,"--presently,--"how can we sell it without the Cresswells knowing?"

"We won't try; we'll just take it to them and give them half, like the other tenants."

"But the swamp is mortal thick and hard to clear."

"We can do it."

Zora had sat still, listening; but now, suddenly, she leapt to her feet.

"Come," she said, "I'll take the clothes home, then we'll go"--she glanced at him--"down where the dreams are." And laughing, they hurried on.

Elspeth stood in the path that wound down to the cottage, and without a word Zora dropped the basket at her feet. She turned back; but Bles, struck by a thought, paused. The old woman was short, broad, black and wrinkled, with yellow fangs, red hanging lips, and wicked eyes. She leered at them; the boy shrank before it, but stood his ground.

"Aunt Elspeth," he began, "Zora and I are going to plant and tend some cotton to pay for her schooling--just the very best cotton we can find--and I heard"--he hesitated,--"I heard you had some wonderful seed."

"Yes," she mumbled, "I'se got the seed--I'se got it--wonder seed, sowed wid the three spells of Obi in the old land ten tousand moons ago. But you couldn't plant it," with a sudden shrillness, "it would kill you."

"But--" Bles tried to object, but she waved him away.

"Git the ground--git the ground; dig it--pet it, and we'll see what we'll see." And she disappeared.

Zora was not sure that it had been wise to tell their secret.

"I was going to steal the seed," she said. "I knows where it is, and I don't fear conjure."

"You mustn't steal, Zora," said Bles, gravely.

"Why?" Zora quickly asked.

But before he answered, they both forgot; for their faces were turned toward the wonder of the swamp. The golden sun was pouring floods of glory through the slim black trees, and the mystic sombre pools caught and tossed back the glow in darker, duller crimson. Long echoing cries leapt to and fro; silent footsteps crept hither and yonder; and the girl's eyes gleamed with a wild new joy.

"The dreams!" she cried. "The dreams!" And leaping ahead, she danced along the shadowed path. He hastened after her, but she flew fast and faster; he followed, laughing, calling, pleading. He saw her twinkling limbs a-dancing as once he saw them dance in a halo of firelight; but now the fire was the fire of the world. Her garments twined and flew in shadowy drapings about the perfect moulding of her young and dark half-naked figure. Her heavy hair had burst its fastenings and lay in stiffened, straggling masses, bending reluctantly to the breeze, like curled smoke; while all about, the mad, wild singing rose and fell and trembled, till his head whirled. He paused uncertainly at a parting of the paths, crying:

"Zora! Zora!" as for some lost soul. "Zora! Zora!" echoed the cry, faintly.

Abruptly the music fell; there came a long slow-growing silence; and then, with a flutter, she was beside him again, laughing in his ears and crying with mocking voice:

"Is you afeared, honey?"

He saw in her eyes sweet yearnings, but could speak nothing. He could only clasp her hand tightly, and again down they raced through the wood.

All at once the swamp changed and chilled to a dull grayness; tall, dull trees started down upon the murky waters; and long pendent streamings of moss-like tears dripped from tree to earth. Slowly and warily they threaded their way.

"Are you sure of the path, Zora?" he once inquired anxiously.

"I could find it asleep," she answered, skipping sure-footed onward. He continued to hold her hand tightly, and his own pace never slackened. Around them the gray and death-like wilderness darkened. They felt and saw the cold white mist rising slowly from the ground, and waters growing blacker and broader.

At last they came to what seemed the end. Silently and dismally the half-dead forest, with its ghostly moss, lowered and darkened, and the black waters spread into a great silent lake of slimy ooze. The dead trunk of a fallen tree lay straight in front, torn and twisted, its top hidden yonder and mingled with impenetrable undergrowth.

"Where now, Zora?" he cried.

In a moment she had slipped her hand away and was scrambling upon the tree trunk. The waters yawned murkily below.

"Careful! careful!" he warned, struggling after her until she disappeared amid the leaves. He followed eagerly, but cautiously; and all at once found himself confronting a paradise.

Before them lay a long island, opening to the south, on the black lake, but sheltered north and east by the dense undergrowth of the black swamp and the rampart of dead and living trees. The soil was virgin and black, thickly covered over with a tangle of bushes, vines, and smaller growth all brilliant with early leaves and wild flowers.

"A pretty tough proposition for clearing and ploughing," said Bles, with practised eye. But Zora eagerly surveyed the prospect.

"It's where the Dreams lives," she whispered.

Meantime Miss Taylor had missed her brooch and searched for it in vain. In the midst of this pursuit the truth occurred to her--Zora had stolen it. Negroes would steal, everybody said. Well, she must and would have the pin, and she started for Elspeth's cabin.

On the way she met the old woman in the path, but got little satisfaction. Elspeth merely grunted ungraciously while eyeing the white woman with suspicion.

Mary Taylor, again alone, sat down at a turn in the path, just out of sight of the house, and waited. Soon she saw, with a certain grim satisfaction, Zora and Bles emerging from the swamp engaged in earnest conversation. Here was an opportunity to overwhelm both with an unforgettable reprimand. She rose before them like a spectral vengeance.

"Zora, I want my pin."

Bles started and stared; but Zora eyed her calmly with something like disdain.

"What pin?" she returned, unmoved.

"Zora, don't deny that you took my pin from the desk this afternoon," the teacher commanded severely.

"I didn't say I didn't take no pin."

"Persons who will lie and steal will do anything."

"Why shouldn't people do anything they wants to?"

"And you knew the pin was mine."

"I saw you a-wearing of it," admitted Zora easily.

"Then you have stolen it, and you are a thief."

Still Zora appeared to be unimpressed with the heinousness of her fault.

"Did you make that pin?" she asked.

"No, but it is mine."

"Why is it yours?"

"Because it was given to me."

"But you don't need it; you've got four other prettier ones--I counted."

"That makes no difference."

"Yes it does--folks ain't got no right to things they don't need."

"That makes no difference, Zora, and you know it. The pin is mine. You stole it. If you had wanted a pin and asked me I might have given you--"

The girl blazed.

"I don't want your old gifts," she almost hissed. "You don't own what you don't need and can't use. God owns it and I'm going to send it back to Him."

With a swift motion she whipped the pin from her pocket and raised her arm to hurl it into the swamp. Bles caught her hand. He caught it lightly and smiled sorrowfully into her eyes. She wavered a moment, then the answering light sprang to her face. Dropping the brooch into his hand, she wheeled and fled toward the cabin.

Bles handed it silently to Miss Taylor. Mary Taylor was beside herself with impatient anger--and anger intensified by a conviction of utter helplessness to cope with any strained or unusual situations between herself and these two.

"Alwyn," she said sharply, "I shall report Zora for stealing. And you may report yourself to Miss Smith tonight for disrespect toward a teacher."

_Eight_

MR. HARRY CRESSWELL

The Cresswells, father and son, were at breakfast. The daughter was taking her coffee and rolls up stairs in bed.

"P'sh! I don't like it!" declared Harry Cresswell, tossing the letter back to his father. "I tell you, it is a damned Yankee trick."

He was a man of thirty-five, smooth and white, slight, well-bred and masterful. His father, St. John Cresswell, was sixty, white-haired, mustached and goateed; a stately, kindly old man with a temper and much family pride.

"Well, well," he said, his air half preoccupied, half unconcerned, "I suppose so--and yet"--he read the letter again, aloud: "'Approaching you as one of the most influential landowners of Alabama, on a confidential matter'--h'm--h'm--'a combination of capital and power, such as this nation has never seen'--'cotton manufacturers and cotton growers.' ... Well, well! Of course, I suppose there's nothing in it. And yet, Harry, my boy, this cotton-growing business is getting in a pretty tight pinch. Unless relief comes somehow--well, we'll just have to quit. We simply can't keep the cost of cotton down to a remunerative figure with niggers getting scarcer and dearer. Every year I have to pinch 'em closer and closer. I had to pay Maxwell two hundred and fifty to get that old darky and his boys turned over to me, and one of the young ones has run away already."

Harry lighted a cigarette.

"We must drive them more. You're too easy, father; they understand that. By the way, what did that letter say about a 'sister'?"

"Says he's got a sister over at the nigger school whom perhaps we know. I suppose he thinks we dine there occasionally." The old man chuckled. "That reminds me, Elspeth is sending her girl there."

"What's that?" An angry gleam shot into the younger man's eye.

"Yes. She announced this morning, pert as you please, that she couldn't tote clothes any more--she had to study."

"Damn it! This thing is going too far. We can't keep a maid or a plough-boy on the place because of this devilish school. It's going to ruin the whole labor system. We've been too mild and decent. I'm going to put my foot down right here. I'll make Elspeth take that girl out of school if I have to horse-whip her, and I'll warn the school against further interference with our tenants. Here, in less than a week, go two plough-hands--and now this girl."

The old man smiled.

"You'll hardly miss any work Zora does," he said.

"I'll make her work. She's giving herself too many damned airs. I know who's back of this--it's that nigger we saw talking to the white woman in the field the other day."

"Well, don't work yourself up. The wench don't amount to much anyhow. By the way, though, if you do go to the school it won't hurt to see this Taylor's sister and size the family up."

"Pshaw! I'm going to give the Smith woman such a scare that she'll keep her hands off our niggers." And Harry Cresswell rode away.

Mary Taylor had charge of the office that morning, while Miss Smith, shut up in her bedroom, went laboriously over her accounts. Miss Mary suddenly sat up, threw a hasty glance into the glass and felt the back of her belt. It was--it couldn't be--surely, it was Mr. Harry Cresswell riding through the gateway on his beautiful white mare. He kicked the gate open rather viciously, did not stop to close it, and rode straight across the lawn. Miss Taylor noticed his riding breeches and leggings, his white linen and white, clean-cut, high-bred face. Such apparitions were few about the country lands. She felt inclined to flutter, but gripped herself.

"Good-morning," she said, a little stiffly.