Chapter IV: Part 4

"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.

These conclusions she did not pretend to have originated; but she adopted them from reading and conversation, after hesitating for a year before such puzzling contradictions as Bles Alwyn and Harry Cresswell. For her to conclude to treat Bles Alwyn as a man despite his color was as impossible as to think Mr. Cresswell a criminal. Some compromise was imperative which would save her the pleasure of Mr. Cresswell's company and at the same time leave open a way of fulfilling the world's duty to this black boy. She thought she had found this compromise and she wrote Mrs. Grey suggesting a chain of endowed Negro schools under the management of trustees composed of Northern business men and local Southern whites. Mrs. Grey acquiesced gladly and announced her plan, eventually writing Miss Smith of her decision "to second her noble efforts in helping the poor colored people," and she hoped to have the plan under way before next fall.

The sharpness of Miss Smith's joy did not let her dwell on the proposed "Board of Trust"; of course, it would be a board of friends of the school.

She sat in her office looking out across the land. School had closed for the year and Bles with the carryall was just taking Miss Taylor to the train with her trunk and bags. Far up the road she could see dotted here and there the little dirty cabins of Cresswell's tenants--the Cresswell domain that lay like a mighty hand around the school, ready at a word to squeeze its life out. Only yonder, to the eastward, lay the way out; the five hundred acres of the Tolliver plantation, which the school needed so sadly for its farm and community. But the owner was a hard and ignorant white man, hating "niggers" only a shade more than he hated white aristocrats of the Cresswell type. He had sold the school its first land to pique the Cresswells; but he would not sell any more, she was sure, even now when the promise of wealth faced the school.

She lay back and closed her eyes and fell lightly asleep. As she slept an old woman came toiling up the hill northward from the school, and out of the eastward spur of the Cresswell barony. She was fat and black, hooded and aproned, with great round head and massive bosom. Her face was dull and heavy and homely, her old eyes sorrowful. She moved swiftly, carrying a basket on her arm. Opposite her, to the southward, but too far for sight, an old man came out of the lower Cresswell place, skirting the swamp. He was tall, black, and gaunt, part bald with tufted hair, and a cowed and furtive look was in his eyes. One leg was crippled, and he hobbled painfully.

Up the road to the eastward that ran past the school, with the morning sun at his back, strode a young man, yellow, crisp-haired, strong-faced, with darkly knit brows. He greeted Bles and the teacher coldly, and moved on in nervous haste. A woman, hurrying out of the westward swamp up the path that led from Elspeth's, saw him and shrank back hastily. She turned quickly into the swamp and waited, looking toward the school. The old woman hurried into the back gate just as the old man appeared to the southward on the road. The young man greeted him cordially and they stopped a moment to talk, while the hiding woman watched.

"Howdy, Uncle Jim."

"Howdy, son. Hit's hot, ain't it? How is you?"

"Tolerable, how are you?"

"Poorly, son, poorly--and worser in mind. I'se goin' up to talk to old Miss."

"So am I, but I just see Aunt Rachel going in. We'd better wait."

Miss Smith started up at the timid knocking, and rubbed her eyes. It was long since she had slept in the daytime and she was annoyed at such laziness. She opened the back door and led the old woman to the office.

"Now, what have you got there?" she demanded, eyeing the basket.

"Just a little chicken fo' you and a few aigs."

"Oh, you are so thoughtful!" Sarah Smith's was a grateful heart.

"Go 'long now--hit ain't a thing."

Then came a pause, the old woman sliding into the proffered seat, while over her genial, dimpled smile there dropped a dull veil of care. Her eyes shifted uneasily. Miss Smith tried not to notice the change.

"Well, are you all moved, Aunt Rachel?" she inquired cheerfully.

"No'm, and we ain't gwine to move."

"But I thought it was all arranged."

"It was," gloomily, "but de ole Cunnel, he won't let us go."

The listener was instantly sympathetic. "Why not?" she asked.

"He says we owes him."

"But didn't you settle at Christmas?"

"Yas'm; but when he found we was goin' away, he looked up some more debts."

"How much?"

"I don't know 'zactly--more'n a hundred dollars. Den de boys done got in dat trouble, and he paid their fines."

"What was the trouble?"

"Well, one was a-gambling, and the other struck the overseer what was a-whippin' him."

"Whipping him!"--in horrified exclamation, quite as much at Aunt Rachel's matter-of-fact way of regarding the matter as at the deed itself.

"Yas'm. He didn't do his work right and he whipped him. I speck he needed it."

"But he's a grown man," Miss Smith urged earnestly.

"Yas'm; he's twenty now, and big."

"Whipped him!" Miss Smith repeated. "And so you can't leave?"

"No'm, he say he'll sell us out and put us in de chain-gang if we go. The boys is plumb mad, but I'se a-pleadin' with 'em not to do nothin' rash."

"But--but I thought they had already started to work a crop on the Tolliver place?"

"Yes'm, dey had; but, you see, dey were arrested, and then Cunnel Cresswell took 'em and 'lowed they couldn't leave his place. Ol' man Tolliver was powerful mad."

"Why, Aunt Rachel, it's slavery!" cried the lady in dismay. Aunt Rachel did not offer to dispute her declaration.

"Yas'm, hit's slavery," she agreed. "I hates it mighty bad, too, 'cause I wanted de little chillens in school; but--" The old woman broke down and sobbed.

A knocking came at the door; hastily wiping her eyes Aunt Rachel rose.

"I'll--I'll see what I can do, Aunt Rachel--I must do something," murmured Miss Smith hastily, as the woman departed, and an old black man came limping in. Miss Smith looked up in surprise.

"I begs pardon, Mistress--I begs pardon. Good-morning."

"Good-morning--" she hesitated.

"Sykes--Jim Sykes--that's me."

"Yes, I've heard of you, Mr. Sykes; you live over south of the swamp."

"Yes, ma'am, that's me; and I'se got a little shack dar and a bit of land what I'se trying to buy."

"Of Colonel Cresswell?"

"Yas'm, of de Cunnel."

"And how long have you been buying it?"

"Going on ten year now; and dat's what I comes to ask you about."

"Goodness me! And how much have you paid a year?"

"I gen'rally pays 'bout three bales of cotton a year."

"Does he furnish you rations?"

"Only sugar and coffee and a little meat now and then."

"What does it amount to a year?"

"I doesn't rightly know--but I'se got some papers here."

Miss Smith looked them over and sighed. It was the same old tale of blind receipts for money "on account"--no items, no balancing. By his help she made out that last year his total bill at Cresswell's store was perhaps forty dollars.

"An' last year's bill was bigger'n common 'cause I hurt my leg working at the gin and had to have some medicine."

"Why, as far as I can see, Mr. Sykes, you've paid Cresswell about a thousand dollars in the last ten years. How large is your place?"

"About twenty acres."

"And what were you to pay for it?"

"Four hundred."

"Have you got the deed?"

"Yes'm, but I ain't finished paying yet; de Cunnel say as how I owes him two hundred dollars still, and I can't see it. Dat's why I come over here to talk wid you."

"Where is the deed?"

He handed it to her and her heart sank. It was no deed, but a complicated contract binding the tenant hand and foot to the landlord. She sighed, he watching her eagerly.

"I'se getting old," he explained, "and I ain't got nobody to take care of me. I can't work as I once could, and de overseers dey drives me too hard. I wants a little home to die in."

Miss Smith's throat swelled. She couldn't tell him that he would never get one at the present rate; she only said:

"I'll--look this up. You come again next Saturday."

Then sadly she watched the ragged old slave hobble away with his cherished "papers." He greeted the young man at the gate and passed out, while the latter walked briskly up to the door and knocked.

"Why, how do you do, Robert?"

"How do you do, Miss Smith?"

"Well, are you getting things in shape so as to enter school early next year?"

Robert looked embarrassed.

"That's what I came to tell you, Miss Smith. Mr. Cresswell has offered me forty acres of good land."

Miss Smith looked disheartened.

"Robert, here you are almost finished, and my heart is set on your going to Atlanta University and finishing college. With your fine voice and talent for drawing--"

A dogged look settled on Robert's young bright face, and the speaker paused.

"What's the use, Miss Smith--what opening is there for a--a nigger with an education?"

Miss Smith was shocked.

"Why--why, every chance," she protested, "and where there's none _make_ a chance!"

"Miss Taylor says"--Miss Smith's heart sank; how often had she heard that deadening phrase in the last year!--"that there's no use. That farming is the only thing we ought to try to do, and I reckon she thinks there ain't much chance even there."

"Robert, farming is a noble calling. Whether you're suited to it or not, I don't yet know, but I'd like nothing better than to see you settled here in a decent home with a family, running a farm. But, Robert, farming doesn't call for less intelligence than other things; it calls for more. It is because the world thinks any training good enough for a farmer that the Southern farmer is today practically at the mercy of his keener and more intelligent fellows. And of all people, Robert, your people need trained intelligence to cope with this problem of farming here. Without intelligence and training and some capital it is the wildest nonsense to think you can lead your people out of slavery. Look round you." She told him of the visitors. "Are they not hard working honest people?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Yet they are slaves--dumb driven cattle."

"But they have no education."

"And you have a smattering; therefore are ready to pit yourself against the organized plantation system without capital or experience. Robert, you may succeed; you may find your landlord honest and the way clear; but my advice to you is--finish your education, develop your talents, and then come to your life work a full-fledged man and not a half-ignorant boy."

"I'll think of it," returned the boy soberly. "I reckon you're right. I know Miss Taylor don't think much of us. But I'm tired of waiting; I want to get to work."

Miss Smith laid a kindly hand upon his shoulder.

"I've been waiting thirty years, Robert," she said, with feeling, and he hung his head.

"I wanted to talk about it," he awkwardly responded, turning slowly away. But Miss Smith stopped him.

"Robert, where is the land Cresswell offers you?"

"It's on the Tolliver place."

"The Tolliver place?"

"Yes, he is going to buy it."

Miss Smith dismissed the boy absently and sat down. The crisis seemed drawing near. She had not dreamed the Tolliver place was for sale. The old man must be hard pressed to sell to the Cresswells.

She started up. Why not go see him? Perhaps a mortgage on the strength of the endowment? It was dangerous--but--

She threw a veil over her hair, and opened the door. A woman stood there, who shrank and cowered, as if used to blows. Miss Smith eyed her grimly, then slowly stepped back.

"Come in," she commanded briefly, motioning the woman to a chair.

But she stood, a pathetic figure, faded, worn, yet with unmistakable traces of beauty in her golden face and soft brown hair. Miss Smith contemplated her sadly. Here was her most haunting failure, this girl whom she first had seen twelve years ago in her wonderful girlish comeliness. She had struggled and fought for her, but the forces of the devil had triumphed. She caught glimpses of her now and then, but today was the first time she had spoken to her for ten years. She saw the tears that gathered but did not fall; then her hands quivered.

"Bertie," she began brokenly. The girl shivered, but stood aloof.

"Miss Smith," she said. "No--don't talk--I'm bad--but I've got a little girl, Miss Smith, ten years old, and--and--I'm afraid for her; I want you to take her."

"I have no place for one so young. And why are you afraid for her?"

"The men there are beginning to notice her."

"Where?"

"At Elspeth's."

"Do you stay there now?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"_He_ wants me to."

"Must you do as he wants?"

"Yes. But I want the child--different."

"Don't _you_ want to be different?"

The woman quivered again but she answered steadily: "No."

Miss Smith sank into a chair and moistened her dry lips.

"Elspeth's is an awful place," she affirmed solemnly.

"Yes."

"And Zora?"

"She is not there much now, she stays away."

"But if she escapes, why not you?"

"She wants to escape."

"And you?"

"I don't want to."

This stubborn depravity was so distressing that Sarah Smith was at an utter loss what to say or do.

"I can do nothing--" she began.

"For me," the woman quickly replied; "I don't ask anything; but for the child,--she isn't to blame."

The older woman wavered.

"Won't you try?" pleaded the younger.

"Yes--I'll try, I'll try; I am trying all the time, but there are more things than my weak strength can do. Good-bye."

Miss Smith stood a long time in the doorway, watching the fading figure and vaguely trying to remember what it was that she had started to do, when the sharp staccato step of a mule drew her attention to a rider who stopped at the gate. It was her neighbor, Tolliver--a gaunt, yellow-faced white man, ragged, rough, and unkempt; one of the poor whites who had struggled up and failed. He spent no courtesy on the "nigger" teacher, but sat in his saddle and called her to the gate, and she went.

"Say," he roughly opened up, "I've got to sell some land and them damn Cresswells are after it. You can have it for five thousand dollars if you git the cash in a week." With a muttered oath he rode abruptly off; but not before she had seen the tears in his eyes.

All night Sarah Smith lay thinking, and all day she thought and dreamed. Toward dark she walked slowly out the gate and up the highway toward the Cresswell oaks. She had never been within the gates before, and she looked about thoughtfully. The great trees in their regular curving rows must have been planted more than half a century ago. The lawn was well tended and the flowers. Yes, there were signs of taste and wealth. "But it was built on a moan," cried Miss Smith to herself, passionately, and she would not look round any more, but stared straight ahead where she saw old Colonel Cresswell smoking and reading on the verandah.

The Colonel saw her, too, and was uneasy, for he knew that Miss Smith had a sharp tongue and a most disconcerting method of argument, which he, as a Southern gentleman, courteous to all white females, even if they did eat with "niggers," could not properly answer. He received her with courtesy, offered a chair, laid aside his cigar, and essayed some general remarks on cotton weather. But Miss Smith plunged into her subject:

"Colonel Cresswell, I'm thinking of raising some money from a mortgage on our school property."

The Colonel's face involuntarily lighted up. He thought he saw the beginning of the end of an institution which had been a thorn in his flesh ever since Tolliver, in a fit of rage, had sold land for a Negro school.

"H'm," he reflected deprecatingly, wiping his brow.

"I need some ready money," she continued, "to keep from curtailing our work."

"Indeed?"

"I have good prospects in a year or so"--the Colonel looked up sharply, but said nothing--"and so I thought of a mortgage."

"Money is pretty tight," was the Colonel's first objection.

"The land is worth, you know, at least fifty dollars an acre."

"Not more than twenty-five dollars, I fear."

"Why, you wanted seventy-five dollars for poorer land last year! We have two hundred acres." It was not for nothing that this lady had been born in New England.

"I wouldn't reckon it as worth more than five thousand dollars," insisted the Colonel.

"And ten thousand dollars for improvements."

But the Colonel arose. "You had better talk to the directors of the Jefferson Bank," he said politely. "They may accommodate you--how much would you want?"

"Five thousand dollars," Miss Smith replied. Then she hesitated. That would buy the land, to be sure; but money was needed to develop and run it; to install tenants; and then, too, for new teachers. But she said nothing more, and, nodding to his polite bow, departed. Colonel Cresswell had noticed her hesitation, and thought of it as he settled to his cigar again.

Bles Alwyn arose next morning and examined the sky critically. He feared rain. The season had been quite wet enough, particularly down on the swamp land, and but yesterday Bles had viewed his dykes with apprehension for the black pool scowled about them. He dared not think what a long heavy rain might do to the wonderful island of cotton which now stood fully five feet high, with flowers and squares and budding bolls. It might not rain, but the safest thing would be to work at those dykes, so he started for spade and hoe. He heard Miss Smith calling, however.

"Bles--hitch up!"

He was vexed. "Are you--in a hurry, Miss Smith?" he asked.

"Yes, I am," she replied, with unmistakable positiveness.

He started off, and hesitated. "Miss Smith, would Jim do to drive?"

"No," sharply. "I want you particularly." At another time she might have observed his anxiety, but today she was agitated. She knew she was taking a critical step.

Slowly Bles hitched up. After all it might not rain, he argued as they jogged toward town. In silence they rode on. Bles kept looking at the skies. The south was getting darker and darker. It might rain. It might rain only an hour or so, but, suppose it should rain a day--two days--a week?

Miss Smith was looking at her own skies and despite the promised sunrise they loomed darkly. Five thousand was needed for the land and at least another thousand for repairs. Two thousand would "buy" a half dozen desirable tenants by paying their debts to their present landlords. Then two thousand would be wanted for new teachers and a carpenter shop--ten thousand dollars!

It was a great temptation. And yet, once in the hands of these past-masters of debt-manipulation, would her school be safe? Suppose, after all, this Grey gift--but she caught her breath sharply just as a wet splash of rain struck upon her forehead. No. God could not be so cruel. She pushed her bonnet back: how good and cool the water felt! But on Bles as he raised the buggy top it felt hot and fiery.

He felt the coming of some great calamity, the end of a dream. This rain might stay for days; it looked like such a downpour; and that would mean the end of the Silver Fleece; the end of Zora's hopes; the end of everything. He gulped in despairing anger and hit the staid old horse the smartest tap she had known all summer.

"Why, Bles, what's the matter?" called Miss Smith, as the horse started forward. He murmured something about getting wet and drew up at the Toomsville bank.

Miss Smith was invited politely into the private parlor. She explained her business. The President was there and Colonel Cresswell and one other local director.

"I have come for a mortgage. Our land is, as you know, gentlemen, worth at least ten thousand dollars; the buildings cost fifteen thousand dollars; our property is, therefore, conservatively valued at twenty-five thousand dollars. Now I want to mortgage it for"--she hesitated--"five thousand dollars."

Colonel Cresswell was silent, but the president said:

"Money is rather scarce just now, Miss Smith; but it happens that I have ten thousand dollars on hand, which we prefer, however, to loan in one lump sum. Now, if the security were ample, I think perhaps you might get this ten thousand dollars."

Miss Smith grew white; it was the sum she wanted. She tried to escape the temptation, yet the larger amount was more than twice as desirable to her as the smaller, and she knew that they knew it. They were trying to tempt her; they wanted as firm a hold on the school property as possible. And yet, why should she hesitate? It was a risk, but the returns would be enormous--she must do it. Besides, there was the endowment; it was certain; yes--she felt forced to close the bargain.

"Very well," she declared her decision, and they handed her the preliminary papers. She took the pen and glanced at Mr. Cresswell; he was smiling slightly, but nevertheless she signed her name grimly, in a large round hand, "Sarah Smith."

_Thirteen_

MRS. GREY GIVES A DINNER

The Hon. Charles Smith, Miss Sarah's brother, was walking swiftly uptown from Mr. Easterly's Wall Street office and his face was pale. At last the Cotton Combine was to all appearances an assured fact and he was slated for the Senate. The price he had paid was high: he was to represent the interests of the new trust and sundry favorable measures were already drafted and reposing in the safe of the combine's legal department. Among others was one relating to child labor, another that would effect certain changes in the tariff, and a proposed law providing for a cotton bale of a shape and dimensions different from the customary--the last constituting a particularly clever artifice which, under the guise of convenience in handling, would necessitate the installation of entirely new gin and compress machinery, to be supplied, of course, by the trust.

As Mr. Smith drew near Mrs. Grey's Murray Hill residence his face had melted to a cynical smile. After all why should he care? He had tried independence and philanthropy and failed. Why should he not be as other men? He had seen many others that very day swallow the golden bait and promise everything. They were gentlemen. Why should he pose as better than his fellows? There was young Cresswell. Did his aristocratic air prevent his succumbing to the lure of millions and promising the influence of his father and the whole Farmer's League to the new project? Mr. Smith snapped his fingers and rang the bell. The door opened softly. The dark woodwork of the old English wainscoting glowed with the crimson flaming of logs in the wide fireplace. There was just the touch of early autumn chill in the air without, that made both the fire and the table with its soft linen, gold and silver plate, and twinkling glasses a warming, satisfying sight.

Mrs. Grey was a portly woman, inclined to think much of her dinner and her clothes, both of which were always rich and costly. She was not herself a notably intelligent woman; she greatly admired intelligence or whatever looked to her like intelligence in others. Her money, too, was to her an ever worrying mystery and surprise, which she found herself always scheming to husband shrewdly and spend philanthropically--a difficult combination.

As she awaited her guests she surveyed the table with both satisfaction and disquietude, for her social functions were few, tonight there were--she checked them off on her fingers--Sir James Creighton, the rich English manufacturer, and Lady Creighton, Mr. and Mrs. Vanderpool, Mr. Harry Cresswell and his sister, John Taylor and his sister, and Mr. Charles Smith, whom the evening papers mentioned as likely to be United States Senator from New Jersey--a selection of guests that had been determined, unknown to the hostess, by the meeting of cotton interests earlier in the day.

Mrs. Grey's chef was high-priced and efficient, and her butler was the envy of many; consequently, she knew the dinner would be good. To her intense satisfaction, it was far more than this. It was a most agreeable couple of hours; all save perhaps Mr. Smith unbent, the Englishman especially, and the Vanderpools were most gracious; but if the general pleasure was owing to any one person particularly it was to Mr. Harry Cresswell. Mrs. Grey had met Southerners before, but not intimately, and she always had in mind vividly their cruelty to "poor Negroes," a subject she made a point of introducing forthwith. She was therefore most agreeably surprised to hear Mr. Cresswell express himself so cordially as approving of Negro education.

"Why, I thought," said Mrs. Grey, "that you Southerners rather disapproved--or at least--"

Mr. Cresswell inclined his head courteously.

"We Southerners, my dear Mrs. Grey, are responsible for a variety of reputations." And he told an anecdote that set the table laughing. "Seriously, though," he continued, "we are not as black as the blacks paint us, although on the whole I _prefer_ that Helen should marry--a white man."

They all glanced at Miss Cresswell, who lay softly back in her chair like a white lily, gleaming and bejewelled, her pale face flushing under the scrutiny; Mrs. Grey was horrified.

"Why--why the idea!" she sputtered. "Why, Mr. Cresswell, how can you conceive of anything else--no Northerner dreams--"

Mr. Cresswell sipped his wine slowly.

"No--no--I do not think you do _mean_ that--" He paused and the Englishman bent forward.

"Really, now, you do not mean to say that there is a danger of--of amalgamation, do you?" he sang.

Mr. Cresswell explained. No, of course there was no immediate danger; but when people were suddenly thrust beyond their natural station, filled with wild ideas and impossible ambitions, it meant terrible danger to Southern white women.

"But you believe in some education?" asked Mary Taylor.

"I believe in the training of people to their highest capacity." The Englishman here heartily seconded him.

"But," Cresswell added significantly, "capacity differs enormously between races."

The Vanderpools were sure of this and the Englishman, instancing India, became quite eloquent. Mrs. Grey was mystified, but hardly dared admit it. The general trend of the conversation seemed to be that most individuals needed to be submitted to the sharpest scrutiny before being allowed much education, and as for the "lower races" it was simply criminal to open such useless opportunities to them.

"Why, I had a colored servant-girl once," laughed Mrs. Vanderpool by way of climax, "who spent half her wages in piano lessons."

Then Mary Taylor, whose conscience was uncomfortable, said:

"But, Mr. Cresswell, you surely believe in schools like Miss Smith's?"

"Decidedly," returned Mr. Cresswell, with enthusiasm, "it has done great good."

Mrs. Grey was gratified and murmured something of Miss Smith's "sacrifice."

"Positively heroic," added Cresswell, avoiding his sister's eyes.

"Of course," Mary Taylor hastened to encourage this turn of the conversation, "there are many points on which Miss Smith and I disagree, but I think everybody admires her work."

Mrs. Grey wanted particulars. "What did you disagree about?" she asked bluntly.

"I may be responsible for some of the disagreement," interrupted Mr. Cresswell, hesitatingly; "I'm afraid Miss Smith does not approve of us white Southerners."

"But you mean to say you can't even advise her?"

"Oh, no; we can. But--we're not--er--exactly welcomed. In fact," said Cresswell gravely, "the chief criticism I have against your Northerners' schools for Negroes is, that they not only fail to enlist the sympathy and aid of the _best_ Southerners, but even repel it."

"That is very wrong--very wrong," commented the Englishman warmly, a sentiment in which Mrs. Grey hastened to agree.

"Of course," continued Cresswell, "I am free to confess that I have no personal desire to dabble in philanthropy, or conduct schools of any kind; my hands are full of other matters."

"But it's precisely the advice of such disinterested men that philanthropic work needs," Mr. Vanderpool urged.

"Well, I volunteered advice once in this case and I sha'n't repeat the experiment soon," said Cresswell laughing. Mrs. Grey wanted to hear the incident, but the young man was politely reluctant. Mary Taylor, however, related the tale of Zora to Mrs. Grey's private ear later.

"Fortunately," said Mr. Vanderpool, "Northerners and Southerners are arriving at a better mutual understanding on most of these matters."

"Yes, indeed," Cresswell agreed. "After all, they never were far apart, even in slavery days; both sides were honest and sincere."

All through the dinner Mr. Smith had been preoccupied and taciturn. Now he abruptly shot a glance at Cresswell.

"I suppose that one was right and one was wrong."

"No," said Cresswell, "both were right."

"I thought the only excuse for fighting was a great Right; if Right is on neither side or simultaneously on both, then War is not only Hell but Damnation."

Mrs. Grey looked shocked and Mrs. Vanderpool smiled.

"How about fighting for exercise?" she suggested.

"At any rate," said Cresswell, "we can all agree on helping these poor victims of our quarrel as far as their limited capacity will allow--and no farther, for that is impossible."

Very soon after dinner Charles Smith excused himself. He was not yet inured to the ways of high finance, and the programme of the cotton barons, as unfolded that day, lay heavy on his mind, despite all his philosophy.

"I have had a--full day," he explained to Mrs. Grey.

_Fourteen_

LOVE

The rain was sweeping down in great thick winding sheets. The wind screamed in the ancient Cresswell oaks and swirled across the swamp in loud, wild gusts. The waters roared and gurgled in the streams, and along the roadside. Then, when the wind fell murmuring away, the clouds grew blacker and blacker and rain in long slim columns fell straight from Heaven to earth digging itself into the land and throwing back the red mud in angry flashes.

So it rained for one long week, and so for seven endless days Bles watched it with leaden heart. He knew the Silver Fleece--his and Zora's--must be ruined. It was the first great sorrow of his life; it was not so much the loss of the cotton itself--but the fantasy, the hopes, the dreams built around it. If it failed, would not they fail? Was not this angry beating rain, this dull spiritless drizzle, this wild war of air and earth, but foretaste and prophecy of ruin and discouragement, of the utter futility of striving? But if his own despair was great his pain at the plight of Zora made it almost unbearable. He did not see her in these seven days. He pictured her huddled there in the swamp in the cheerless leaky cabin with worse than no companions. Ah! the swamp, the cruel swamp! It was a fearful place in the rain. Its oozing mud and fetid vapors, its clinging slimy draperies,--how they twined about the bones of its victims and chilled their hearts. Yet here his Zora,--his poor disappointed child--was imprisoned.

Child? He had always called her child--but now in the inward illumination of these dark days he knew her as neither child nor sister nor friend, but as the One Woman. The revelation of his love lighted and brightened slowly till it flamed like a sunrise over him and left him in burning wonder. He panted to know if she, too, knew, or knew and cared not, or cared and knew not. She was so strange and human a creature. To her all things meant something--nothing was aimless, nothing merely happened. Was this rain beating down and back her love for him, or had she never loved? He walked his room, gripping his hands, peering through the misty windows toward the swamp--rain, rain, rain, nothing but rain. The world was water veiled in mists.

Then of a sudden, at midday, the sun shot out, hot and still; no breath of air stirred; the sky was like blue steel; the earth steamed. Bles rushed to the edge of the swamp and stood there irresolute. Perhaps--if the water had but drained from the cotton!--it was so strong and tall! But, pshaw! Where was the use of imagining? The lagoon had been level with the dykes a week ago; and now? He could almost see the beautiful Silver Fleece, bedraggled, drowned, and rolling beneath the black lake of slime. He went back to his work, but early in the morning the thought of it lured him again. He must at least see the grave of his hope and Zora's, and out of it resurrect new love and strength.