Zora looked down upon Bles, where he stood to his knees in mud. The toil
was beyond exhilaration--it was sickening weariness and panting despair.
The great roots, twined in one unbroken snarl, clung frantically to the
black soil. The vines and bushes fought back with thorn and bramble.
Zora stood wiping the blood from her hands and staring at Bles. She saw
the long gnarled fingers of the tough little trees and they looked like
the fingers of Elspeth down there beneath the earth pulling against the
boy. Slowly Zora forgot her blood and pain. Who would win--the witch, or
Jason?
Bles looked up and saw the bleeding hands. With a bound he was beside
her.
"Zora!" The cry seemed wrung from his heart by contrition. Why had he
not known--not seen before! "Zora, come right out of this! Sit down here
and rest."
She looked at him unwaveringly; there was no flinching of her spirit.
"I sha'n't do it," she said. "You'se working, and I'se going to work."
"But--Zora--you're not used to such work, and I am. You're tired out."
"So is you," was her reply.
He looked himself over ruefully, and dropping his axe, sat down beside
her on a great log. Silently they contemplated the land; it seemed
indeed a hopeless task. Then they looked at each other in sudden,
unspoken fear of failure.
"If we only had a mule!" he sighed. Immediately her face lighted and her
lips parted, but she said nothing. He presently bounded to his feet.
"Never mind, Zora. To-morrow is Saturday, and I'll work all day. We just
_will_ get it done--sometime." His mouth closed with determination.
"We won't work any more today, then?" cried Zora, her eagerness
betraying itself despite her efforts to hide it.
"_You_ won't," affirmed Bles. "But I've got to do just a little--"
But Zora was adamant: he was tired; she was tired; they would rest.
To-morrow with the rising sun they would begin again.
"There'll be a bright moon tonight," ventured Bles.
"Then I'll come too," Zora announced positively, and he had to promise
for her sake to rest.
They went up the path together and parted diffidently, he watching her
flit away with sorrowful eyes, a little disturbed and puzzled at the
burden he had voluntarily assumed, but never dreaming of drawing back.
Zora did not go far. No sooner did she know herself well out of his
sight than she dropped lightly down beside the path, listening intently
until the last echo of his footsteps had died away. Then, leaving the
cabin on her right, and the scene of their toil on her left, she cut
straight through the swamp, skirted the big road, and in a half-hour
was in the lower meadows of the Cresswell plantations, where the tired
stock was being turned out to graze for the night. Here, in the shadow
of the wood, she lingered. Slowly, but with infinite patience, she broke
one strand after another of the barbed-wire fencing, watching, the
while, the sun grow great and crimson, and die at last in mighty
splendor behind the dimmer westward forests.
The voices of the hands and hostlers grew fainter and thinner in the
distance of purple twilight until the last of them disappeared. Silence
fell, deep and soft; the silence of a day sinking to sleep. Not until
then did Zora steal forth from her hiding-place.
She had chosen her mule long before--a big, black beast, snorting over
his pile of corn,--and gliding up to him, she gathered his supper into
her skirt, found a stout halter, and fed him sparingly as he followed
her. Quickly she unfastened the pieces of the fence, led the animal
through, and spliced them again; and then, with fox-like caution, she
guided her prize through the labyrinthine windings of the swamp. It was
dark and haunting, and ever and again rose lonely night cries. The girl
trembled a little, but plodded resolutely on until the dim silver disk
of the half-moon began to glimmer through the trees. Then she pressed on
more swiftly, and fed more scantily, until finally, with the moonlight
pouring over them at the black lagoon, Zora attempted to drive the
animal into the still waters; but he gave a loud protesting snort and
balked. By subtle temptings she gave him to understand that plenty lay
beyond the dark waters, and quickly swinging herself to his back she
started to ride him up and down along the edge of the lagoon, petting
and whispering to him of good things beyond. Slowly her eyes grew wide;
she seemed to be riding out of dreamland on some hobgoblin beast.
Deeper and deeper they penetrated into the dark waters. Now they entered
the slime; now they stumbled on hidden roots; but deeper and deeper they
waded until at last, turning the animal's head with a jerk, and giving
him a sharp stroke of the whip, she headed straight for the island. A
moment the beast snorted and plunged; higher and higher the black still
waters rose round the girl. They crept up her little limbs, swirled
round her breasts and gleamed green and slimy along her shoulders. A
wild terror gripped her. Maybe she was riding the devil's horse, and
these were the yawning gates of hell, black and sombre beneath the cold,
dead radiance of the moon. She saw again the gnarled and black and
claw-like fingers of Elspeth gripping and dragging her down.
A scream struggled in her breast, her fingers relaxed, and the big
beast, stretching his cramped neck, rose in one mighty plunge and
planted his feet on the sand of the island.
* * * * *
Bles, hurrying down in the morning with new tools and new determination,
stopped and stared in blank amazement. Zora was perched in a tree
singing softly and beneath a fat black mule was finishing his breakfast.
"Zora--" he gasped, "how--how did you do it?"
She only smiled and sang a happier measure, pausing only to whisper:
"Dreams--dreams--it's all dreams here, I tells you."
Bles frowned and stood irresolute. The song proceeded with less
assurance, slower and lower, till it stopped, and the singer dropped to
the ground, watching him with wide eyes. He looked down at her, slight,
tired, scratched, but undaunted, striving blindly toward the light with
stanch, unfaltering faith. A pity surged in his heart. He put his arm
about her shoulders and murmured:
"You poor, brave child."
And she shivered with joy.
All day Saturday and part of Sunday they worked feverishly. The trees
crashed and the stumps groaned and crept up into the air, the brambles
blazed and smoked; little frightened animals fled for shelter; and a
wide black patch of rich loam broadened and broadened till it kissed,
on every side but the sheltered east, the black waters of the lagoon.
Late Sunday night the mule again swam the slimy lagoon, and disappeared
toward the Cresswell fields. Then Bles sat down beside Zora, facing the
fields, and gravely took her hand. She looked at him in quick,
breathless fear.
"Zora," he said, "sometimes you tell lies, don't you?"
"Yes," she said slowly; "sometimes."
"And, Zora, sometimes you steal--you stole the pin from Miss Taylor, and
we stole Mr. Cresswell's mule for two days."
"Yes," she said faintly, with a perplexed wrinkle in her brows, "I stole
it."
"Well, Zora, I don't want you ever to tell another lie, or ever to take
anything that doesn't belong to you."
She looked at him silently with the shadow of something like terror far
back in the depths of her deep eyes.
"Always--tell--the truth?" she repeated slowly.
"Yes."
Her fingers worked nervously.
"All the truth?" she asked.
He thought a while.
"No," said he finally, "it is not necessary always to tell all the
truth; but never tell anything that isn't the truth."
"Never?"
"Never."
"Even if it hurts me?"
"Even if it hurts. God is good, He will not let it hurt much."
"He's a fair God, ain't He?" she mused, scanning the evening sky.
"Yes--He's fair, He wouldn't take advantage of a little girl that did
wrong, when she didn't know it was wrong."
Her face lightened and she held his hands in both hers, and said
solemnly as though saying a prayer:
"I won't lie any more, and I won't steal--and--" she looked at him in
startled wistfulness--he remembered it in after years; but he felt he
had preached enough.
"And now for the seed!" he interrupted joyously. "And then--the Silver
Fleece!"
That night, for the first time, Bles entered Zora's home. It was a
single low, black room, smoke-shadowed and dirty, with two dingy beds
and a gaping fire-place. On one side of the fire-place sat the yellow
woman, young, with traces of beauty, holding the white child in her
arms; on the other, hugging the blaze, huddled a formless heap, wreathed
in coils of tobacco smoke--Elspeth, Zora's mother.
Zora said nothing, but glided in and stood in the shadows.
"Good-evening," said Bles cheerily. The woman with the baby alone
responded.
"I came for the seed you promised us--the cotton-seed."
The hag wheeled and approached him swiftly, grasping his shoulders and
twisting her face into his. She was a horrible thing--filthy of breath,
dirty, with dribbling mouth and red eyes. Her few long black teeth hung
loosely like tusks and the folds of fat on her chin curled down on her
great neck. Bles shuddered and stepped back.
"Is you afeared, honey?" she whispered.
"No," he said sturdily.
She chuckled drily. "Yes, you is--everybody's 'feared of old Elspeth;
but she won't hurt you--you's got the spell;" and wheeling again, she
was back at the fire.
"But the seed?" he ventured.
She pointed impressively roofward. "The dark of the moon, boy, the dark
of the moon--the first dark--at midnight." Bles could not wring another
word from her; nor did the ancient witch, by word or look, again give
the slightest indication that she was aware of his presence.
With reluctant farewell, Bles turned home. For a space Zora watched him,
and once she started after him, but came slowly back, and sat by the
fire-place.
Out of the night came voices and laughter, and the sound of wheels and
galloping horses. It was not the soft, rollicking laughter of black men,
but the keener, more metallic sound of white men's cries, and Bles Alwyn
paused at the edge of the wood, looked back and hesitated, but decided
after a moment to go home and to bed.
Zora, however, leapt to her feet and fled into the night, while the hag
screamed after her and cursed. There was tramping of feet on the cabin
floor, and loud voices and singing and cursing.
"Where's Zora?" some one yelled, with an oath. "Damn it! where is she? I
haven't seen her for a year, you old devil."
The hag whimpered and snarled. Far down in the field of the Fleece, Zora
lay curled beneath a tall dark tree asleep. All night there was coming
and going in the cabin; the talk and laughter grew loud and boisterous,
and the red fire glared in the night.
* * * * *
The days flew by and the moon darkened. In the swamp, the hidden island
lay spaded and bedded, and Bles was throwing up a dyke around the edge;
Zora helped him until he came to the black oak at the western edge. It
was a large twisted thing with one low flying limb that curled out
across another tree and made a mighty seat above the waters.
"Don't throw the dirt too high there," she begged; "it'll bring my seat
too near the earth."
He looked up.
"Why, it's a throne," he laughed.
"It needs a roof," he whimsically told her when his day's work was done.
Deftly twisting and intertwining the branches of tree and bush, he wove
a canopy of living green that shadowed the curious nest and warded it
snugly from wind and water.
Early next morning Bles slipped down and improved the nest; adding
foot-rests to make the climbing easy, peep-holes east and west, a bit
of carpet over the bark, and on the rough main trunk, a little picture
in blue and gold of Bougereau's Madonna. Zora sat hidden and alone in
silent ecstasy. Bles peeped in--there was not room to enter: the girl
was staring silently at the Madonna. She seemed to feel rather than hear
his presence, and she inquired softly:
"Who's it, Bles?"
"The mother of God," he answered reverently.
"And why does she hold a lily?"
"It stands for purity--she was a good woman."
"With a baby," Zora added slowly.
"Yes--" said Bles, and then more quickly--"It is the Christ Child--God's
baby."
"God is the father of all the little babies, ain't He, Bles?"
"Why, yes--yes, of course; only this little baby didn't have any other
father."
"Yes, I know one like that," she said,--and then she added softly: "Poor
little Christ-baby."
Bles hesitated, and before he found words Zora was saying:
"How white she is; she's as white as the lily, Bles; but--I'm sorry
she's white--Bles, what's purity--just whiteness?"
Bles glanced at her awkwardly but she was still staring wide-eyed at the
picture, and her voice was earnest. She was now so old and again so much
a child, an eager questioning child, that there seemed about her
innocence something holy.
"It means," he stammered, groping for meanings--"it means being
good--just as good as a woman knows how."
She wheeled quickly toward him and asked him eagerly:
"Not better--not better than she knows, but just as good, in--lying and
stealing and--and everything?"
Bles smiled.
"No--not better than she knows, but just as good."
She trembled happily.
"I'm--pure," she said, with a strange little breaking voice and
gesture. A sob struggled in his throat.
"Of course you are," he whispered tenderly, hiding her little hands in
his.
"I--I was so afraid--sometimes--that I wasn't," she whispered, lifting
up to him her eyes streaming with tears. Silently he kissed her lips.
From that day on they walked together in a new world. No revealing word
was spoken; no vows were given, none asked for; but a new bond held
them. She grew older, quieter, taller, he humbler, more tender and
reverent, as they toiled together.
So the days passed. The sun burned in the heavens; but the silvered
glory of the moon grew fainter and fainter and each night it rose later
than the night before. Then one day Zora whispered:
"Tonight!"
Bles came to the cabin, and he and Zora and Elspeth sat silently around
the fire-place with its meagre embers. The night was balmy and still;
only occasionally a wandering breeze searching the hidden places of the
swamp, or the call and song of night birds, jarred the stillness. Long
they sat, until the silence crept into Bles's flesh, and stretching out
his hand, he touched Zora's, clasping it.
After a time the old woman rose and hobbled to a big black chest. Out of
it she brought an old bag of cotton seed--not the white-green seed which
Bles had always known, but small, smooth black seeds, which she handled
carefully, dipping her hands deep down and letting them drop through her
gnarled fingers. And so again they sat and waited and waited, saying no
word.
Not until the stars of midnight had swung to the zenith did they start
down through the swamp. Bles sought to guide the old woman, but he found
she knew the way better than he did. Her shadowy figure darting in and
out among the trunks till they crossed the tree bridge, moved ever
noiselessly ahead.
She motioned the boy and girl away to the thicket at the edge, and
stood still and black in the midst of the cleared island. Bles slipped
his arm protectingly around Zora, glancing fearfully about in the
darkness. Slowly a great cry rose and swept the island. It struck madly
and sharply, and then died away to uneasy murmuring. From afar there
seemed to come the echo or the answer to the call. The form of Elspeth
blurred the night dimly far off, almost disappearing, and then growing
blacker and larger. They heard the whispering "_swish-swish_" of falling
seed; they felt the heavy tread of a great coming body. The form of the
old woman suddenly loomed black above them, hovering a moment formless
and vast then fading again away, and the "_swish-swish_" of the falling
seed alone rose in the silence of the night.
At last all was still. A long silence. Then again the air seemed
suddenly filled with that great and awful cry; its echoing answer
screamed afar and they heard the raucous voice of Elspeth beating in
their ears:
_"De seed done sowed! De seed done sowed!"_
_Ten_