When slowly from the torpor of ether, one wakens to the misty sense of
eternal loss, and there comes the exquisite prick of pain, then one
feels in part the horror of the ache when Zora wakened to the world
again. The awakening was the work of days and weeks. At first in sheer
exhaustion, physical and mental, she lay and moaned. The sense of
loss--of utter loss--lay heavy upon her. Something of herself, something
dearer than self, was gone from her forever, and an infinite loneliness
and silence, as of endless years, settled on her soul. She wished
neither food nor words, only to be alone. Then gradually the pain of
injury stung her when the blood flowed fuller. As Miss Smith knelt
beside her one night to make her simple prayer Zora sat suddenly
upright, white-swathed, dishevelled, with fury in her midnight eyes.
"I want no prayers!" she cried, "I will not pray! He is no God of mine.
He isn't fair. He knows and won't tell. He takes advantage of us--He
works and fools us." All night Miss Smith heard mutterings of this
bitterness, and the next day the girl walked her room like a
tigress,--to and fro, to and fro, all the long day. Toward night a dumb
despair settled upon her. Miss Smith found her sitting by the window
gazing blankly toward the swamp. She came to Miss Smith, slowly, and put
her hands upon her shoulders with almost a caress.
"You must forgive me," she pleaded plaintively. "I reckon I've been
mighty bad with you, and you always so good to me; but--but, you see--it
hurts so."
"I know it hurts, dear; I know it does. But men and women must learn to
bear hurts in this world."
"Not hurts like this; they couldn't."
"Yes, even hurts like this. Bear and stand straight; be brave. After
all, Zora, no man is quite worth a woman's soul; no love is worth a
whole life."
Zora turned away with a gesture of impatience.
"You were born in ice," she retorted, adding a bit more tenderly, "in
clear strong ice; but I was born in fire. I live--I love; that's all."
And she sat down again, despairingly, and stared at the dull swamp. Miss
Smith stood for a moment and closed her eyes upon a vision.
"Ice!" she whispered. "My God!"
Then, at length, she said to Zora:
"Zora, there's only one way: do something; if you sit thus brooding
you'll go crazy."
"Do crazy folks forget?"
"Nonsense, Zora!" Miss Smith ridiculed the girl's fantastic vagaries;
her sound common sense rallied to her aid. "They are the people who
remember; sane folk forget. Work is the only cure for such pain."
"But there's nothing to do--nothing I want to do--nothing worth
doing--now."
"The Silver Fleece?"
The girl sat upright.
"The Silver Fleece," she murmured. Without further word, slowly she
arose and walked down the stairs, and out into the swamp. Miss Smith
watched her go; she knew that every step must be the keen prickle of
awakening flesh. Yet the girl walked steadily on.
* * * * *
It was the Christmas--not Christmas-tide of the North and West, but
Christmas of the Southern South. It was not the festival of the Christ
Child, but a time of noise and frolic and license, the great Pay-Day of
the year when black men lifted their heads from a year's toiling in the
earth, and, hat in hand, asked anxiously: "Master, what have I earned?
Have I paid my old debts to you? Have I made my clothes and food? Have I
got a little of the year's wage coming to me?" Or, more carelessly and
cringingly: "Master, gimme a Christmas gift."
The lords of the soil stood round, gauging their cotton, measuring their
men. Their stores were crowded, their scales groaned, their gins sang.
In the long run public opinion determines all wage, but in more
primitive times and places, private opinion, personal judgment of some
man in power, determines. The Black Belt is primitive and the landlord
wields the power.
"What about Johnson?" calls the head clerk.
"Well, he's a faithful nigger and needs encouragement; cancel his debt
and give him ten dollars for Christmas." Colonel Cresswell glowed, as if
he were full of the season's spirit.
"And Sanders?"
"How's his cotton?"
"Good, and a lot of it."
"He's trying to get away. Keep him in debt, but let him draw what he
wants."
"Aunt Rachel?"
"H'm, they're way behind, aren't they? Give her a couple of dollars--not
a cent more."
"Jim Sykes?"
"Say, Harry, how about that darky, Sykes?" called out the Colonel.
Excusing himself from his guests, Harry Cresswell came into the office.
To them this peculiar spectacle of the market place was of unusual
interest. They saw its humor and its crowding, its bizarre effects and
unwonted pageantry. Black giants and pigmies were there; kerchiefed
aunties, giggling black girls, saffron beauties, and loafing white men.
There were mules and horses and oxen, wagons and buggies and carts; but
above all and in all, rushing through, piled and flying, bound and
baled--was cotton. Cotton was currency; cotton was merchandise; cotton
was conversation.
All this was "beautiful" to Mrs. Grey and "unusually interesting" to
Mrs. Vanderpool. To Mary Taylor it had the fascination of a puzzle whose
other side she had already been partially studying. She was particularly
impressed with the joy and abandon of the scene--light laughter, huge
guffaws, handshakes, and gossipings.
"At all events," she concluded, "this is no oppressed people." And
sauntering away from the rest she noted the smiles of an undersized
smirking yellow man who hurried by with a handful of dollar bills. At a
side entrance liquor was evidently on sale--men were drinking and women,
too; some were staggering, others cursing, and yet others singing. Then
suddenly a man swung around the corner swearing in bitter rage:
"The damned thieves, they'se stole a year's work--the white--" But some
one called, "Hush up, Sanders! There's a white woman." And he threw a
startled look at Mary and hurried by. She was perplexed and upset and
stood hesitating a moment when she heard a well-known voice:
"Why, Miss Taylor, I was alarmed for you; you really must be careful
about trusting yourself with these half drunken Negroes."
"Wouldn't it be better not to give them drink, Mr. Cresswell?"
"And let your neighbor sell them poison at all hours? No, Miss Taylor."
They joined the others, and all were turning toward the carriage when a
figure coming down the road attracted them.
"Quite picturesque," observed Mrs. Vanderpool, looking at the tall, slim
girl swaying toward them with a piled basket of white cotton poised
lightly on her head. "Why," in abrupt recognition, "it is our Venus of
the Roadside, is it not?"
Mary saw it was Zora. Just then, too, Zora caught sight of them, and for
a moment hesitated, then came on; the carriage was in front of the
store, and she was bound for the store. A moment Mary hesitated, too,
and then turned resolutely to greet her. But Zora's eyes did not see
her. After one look at that sorrow-stricken face, Mary turned away.
Colonel Cresswell stood by the door, his hat on, his hands in his
pockets.
"Well, Zora, what have you there?" he asked.
"Cotton, sir."
Harry Cresswell bent over it.
"Great heavens! Look at this cotton!" he ejaculated. His father
approached. The cotton lay in silken handfuls, clean and shimmering,
with threads full two inches long. The idlers, black and white,
clustered round, gazing at it, and fingering it with repeated
exclamations of astonishment.
"Where did this come from?" asked the Colonel sharply. He and Harry were
both eying the girl intently.
"I raised it in the swamp," Zora replied quietly, in a dead voice. There
was no pride of achievement in her manner, no gladness; all that had
flown.
"Is that all?"
"No, sir; I think there's two bales."
"Two bales! Where is it? How the devil--" The Colonel was forgetting his
guests, but Harry intervened.
"You'll need to get it picked right off," he suggested.
"It's all picked, sir."
"But where is it?"
"If you'll send a wagon, sir--"
But the Colonel hardly waited.
"Here you, Jim, take the big mules and drive like--Where's that wench?"
But Zora was already striding on ahead, and was far up the red road when
the great mules galloped into sight and the long whip snapped above
their backs. The Colonel was still excited.
"That cotton must be ours, Harry--all of it. And see that none is
stolen. We've got no contract with the wench, so don't dally with her."
But Harry said firmly, quietly:
"It's fine cotton, and she raised it; she must be paid well for it."
Colonel Cresswell glanced at him with something between contempt and
astonishment on his face.
"You go along with the ladies," Harry added; "I'll see to this cotton."
Mary Taylor's smile had rewarded him; now he must get rid of his
company--before Zora returned.
It was dark when the cotton came; such a load as Cresswell's store had
never seen before. Zora watched it weighed, received the cotton checks,
and entered the store. Only the clerk was there, and he was closing. He
pointed her carelessly to the office in the back part. She went into the
small dim room, and laying the cotton-check on the desk, stood waiting.
Slowly the hopelessness and bitterness of it all came back in a great
whelming flood. What was the use of trying for anything? She was lost
forever. The world was against her, and again she saw the fingers of
Elspeth--the long black claw-like talons that clutched and dragged her
down--down. She did not struggle--she dropped her hands listlessly,
wearily, and stood but half conscious as the door opened and Mr. Harry
Cresswell entered the dimly lighted room. She opened her eyes. She had
expected his father. Somewhere way down in the depths of her nature the
primal tiger awoke and snarled. She was suddenly alive from hair to
finger tip. Harry Cresswell paused a second and swept her full length
with his eye--her profile, the long supple line of bosom and hip, the
little foot. Then he closed the door softly and walked slowly toward
her. She stood like stone, without a quiver; only her eye followed the
crooked line of the Cresswell blue blood on his marble forehead as she
looked down from her greater height; her hand closed almost caressingly
on a rusty poker lying on the stove nearby; and as she sensed the hot
breath of him she felt herself purring in a half heard whisper.
"I should not like--to kill you."
He looked at her long and steadily as he passed to his desk. Slowly he
lighted a cigarette, opened the great ledger, and compared the
cotton-check with it.
"Three thousand pounds," he announced in a careless tone. "Yes, that
will make about two bales of lint. It's extra cotton--say fifteen cents
a pound--one hundred fifty dollars--seventy-five dollars to you--h'm."
He took a note-book out of his pocket, pushed his hat back on his head,
and paused to relight his cigarette.
"Let's see--your rent and rations--"
"Elspeth pays no rent," she said slowly, but he did not seem to hear.
"Your rent and rations with the five years' back debt,"--he made a hasty
calculation--"will be one hundred dollars. That leaves you twenty-five
in our debt. Here's your receipt."
The blow had fallen. She did not wince nor cry out. She took the
receipt, calmly, and walked out into the darkness.
They had stolen the Silver Fleece.
What should she do? She never thought of appeal to courts, for Colonel
Cresswell was Justice of the Peace and his son was bailiff. Why had they
stolen from her? She knew. She was now penniless, and in a sense
helpless. She was now a peon bound to a master's bidding. If Elspeth
chose to sign a contract of work for her to-morrow, it would mean
slavery, jail, or hounded running away. What would Elspeth do? One never
knew. Zora walked on. An hour ago it seemed that this last blow must
have killed her. But now it was different. Into her first despair had
crept, in one fierce moment, grim determination. Somewhere in the world
sat a great dim Injustice which had veiled the light before her young
eyes, just as she raised them to the morning. With the veiling, death
had come into her heart.
And yet, they should not kill her; they should not enslave her. A
desperate resolve to find some way up toward the light, if not to it,
formed itself within her. She would not fall into the pit opening before
her. Somehow, somewhere lay The Way. She must never fall lower; never be
utterly despicable in the eyes of the man she had loved. There was no
dream of forgiveness, of purification, of re-kindled love; all these she
placed sadly and gently into the dead past. But in awful earnestness,
she turned toward the future; struggling blindly, groping in half formed
plans for a way.
She came thus into the room where sat Miss Smith, strangely pallid
beneath her dusky skin. But there lay a light in her eyes.
_Eighteen_