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.
Perhaps she, too, might be there, waiting, weeping. He started at the
thought. He hurried forth sadly. The rain-drops were still dripping and
gleaming from the trees, flashing back the heavy yellow sunlight. He
splashed and stamped along, farther and farther onward until he neared
the rampart of the clearing, and put foot upon the tree-bridge. Then he
looked down. The lagoon was dry. He stood a moment bewildered, then
turned and rushed upon the island. A great sheet of dazzling sunlight
swept the place, and beneath lay a mighty mass of olive green, thick,
tall, wet, and willowy. The squares of cotton, sharp-edged, heavy, were
just about to burst to bolls! And underneath, the land lay carefully
drained and black! For one long moment he paused, stupid, agape with
utter amazement, then leaned dizzily against a tree.
The swamp, the eternal swamp, had been drained in its deepest fastness;
but, how?--how? He gazed about, perplexed, astonished. What a field of
cotton! what a marvellous field! But how had it been saved?
He skirted the island slowly, stopping near Zora's oak. Here lay the
reading of the riddle: with infinite work and pain, some one had dug a
canal from the lagoon to the creek, into which the former had drained by
a long and crooked way, thus allowing it to empty directly. The canal
went straight, a hundred yards through stubborn soil, and it was oozing
now with slimy waters.
He sat down weak, bewildered, and one thought was uppermost--Zora! And
with the thought came a low moan of pain. He wheeled and leapt toward
the dripping shelter in the tree. There she lay--wet, bedraggled,
motionless, gray-pallid beneath her dark-drawn skin, her burning eyes
searching restlessly for some lost thing, her lips a-moaning.
In dumb despair he dropped beside her and gathered her in his arms. The
earth staggered beneath him as he stumbled on; the mud splashed and
sunlight glistened; he saw long snakes slithering across his path and
fear-struck beasts fleeing before his coming. He paused for neither path
nor way but went straight for the school, running in mighty strides, yet
gently, listening to the moans that struck death upon his heart. Once he
fell headlong, but with a great wrench held her from harm, and minded
not the pain that shot through his ribs. The yellow sunshine beat
fiercely around and upon him, as he stumbled into the highway, lurched
across the mud-strewn road, and panted up the porch.
"Miss Smith--!" he gasped, and then--darkness.
The years of the days of her dying were ten. The boy that entered the
darkness and the shadow of death emerged a man, a silent man and grave,
working furiously and haunting, day and night, the little window above
the door. At last, of one gray morning when the earth was stillest, they
came and told him, "She will live!" And he went out under the stars,
lifted his long arms and sobbed: "Curse me, O God, if I let me lose her
again!" And God remembered this in after years.
The hope and dream of harvest was upon the land. The cotton crop was
short and poor because of the great rain; but the sun had saved the
best, and the price had soared. So the world was happy, and the face of
the black-belt green and luxuriant with thickening flecks of the coming
foam of the cotton.
Up in the sick room Zora lay on the little white bed. The net and web of
endless things had been crawling and creeping around her; she had
struggled in dumb, speechless terror against some mighty grasping that
strove for her life, with gnarled and creeping fingers; but now at last,
weakly, she opened her eyes and questioned.
Bles, where was he? The Silver Fleece, how was it? The Sun, the Swamp?
Then finding all well, she closed her eyes and slept. After some days
they let her sit by the window, and she saw Bles pass, but drew back
timidly when he looked; and he saw only the flutter of her gown, and
waved.
At last there came a day when they let her walk down to the porch, and
she felt the flickering of her strength again. Yet she looked different;
her buxom comeliness was spiritualized; her face looked smaller, and her
masses of hair, brought low about her ears, heightened her ghostly
beauty; her skin was darkly transparent, and her eyes looked out from
velvet veils of gloom. For a while she lay in her chair, in happy,
dreamy pleasure at sun and bird and tree. Bles did not know yet that she
was down; but soon he would come searching, for he came each hour, and
she pressed her little hands against her breast to still the beating of
her heart and the bursting wonder of her love.
Then suddenly a panic seized her. He must not find her here--not here;
there was but one place in all the earth for them to meet, and that was
yonder in the Silver Fleece. She rose with a fleeting glance, gathered
the shawl round her, then gliding forward, wavering, tremulous, slipped
across the road and into the swamp. The dark mystery of the Swamp swept
over her; the place was hers. She had been born within its borders;
within its borders she had lived and grown, and within its borders she
had met her love. On she hurried until, sweeping down to the lagoon and
the island, lo! the cotton lay before her! A great white foam was spread
upon its brown and green; the whole field was waving and shivering in
the sunlight. A low cry of pleasure burst from her lips; she forgot her
weakness, and picking her way across the bridge, stood still amid the
cotton that nestled about her shoulders, clasping it lovingly in her
hands.
He heard that she was down-stairs and ran to meet her with beating
heart. The chair was empty; but he knew. There was but one place then
for these two souls to meet. Yet it was far, and he feared, and ran with
startled eyes.
She stood on the island, ethereal, splendid, like some tall, dark, and
gorgeous flower of the storied East. The green and white of the cotton
billowed and foamed about her breasts; the red scarf burned upon her
neck; the dark brown velvet of her skin pulsed warm and tremulous with
the uprushing blood, and in the midnight depths of her great eyes flamed
the mighty fires of long-concealed and new-born love.
He darted through the trees and paused, a tall man strongly but slimly
made. He threw up his hands in the old way and hallooed; happily she
crooned back a low mother-melody, and waited. He came down to her
slowly, with fixed, hungry eyes, threading his way amid the Fleece. She
did not move, but lifted both her dark hands, white with cotton; and
then, as he came, casting it suddenly to the winds, in tears and
laughter she swayed and dropped quivering in his arms. And all the world
was sunshine and peace.
_Fifteen_