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.