The Silver Fleece, darkly cloaked and girded, lay in the cotton
warehouse of the Cresswells, near the store. Its silken fibres, cramped
and close, shone yellow-white in the sunlight; sadly soiled, yet
beautiful. Many came to see Zora's twin bales, as they lay, handling
them and questioning, while Colonel Cresswell grew proud of his
possession.
The world was going well with the Colonel. Freed from money cares,
praised for his generalship in the cotton corner, able to entertain
sumptuously, he was again a Southern gentleman of the older school, and
so in his envied element. Yet today he frowned as he stood poking
absently with his cane at the baled Fleece.
This marriage--or, rather, these marriages--were not to his liking. It
was a _mesalliance_ of a sort that pricked him tenderly; it savored
grossly of bargain and sale. His neighbors regarded it with
disconcerting equanimity. They seemed to think an alliance with
Northern millions an honor for Cresswell blood, and the Colonel thumped
the nearer bale vigorously. His cane slipped along the iron bands
suddenly, and the old man lurching forward, clutched in space to save
himself and touched a human hand.
Zora, sitting shadowed on the farther bale, drew back her hand quickly
at the contact, and started to move away.
"Who's that?" thundered the Colonel, more angry at his involuntary
fright than at the intrusion. "Here, boys!"
But Zora had come forward into the space where the sunlight of the wide
front doors poured in upon the cotton bales.
"It's me, Colonel," she said.
He glared at her. She was taller and thinner than formerly, darkly
transparent of skin, and her dark eyes shone in strange and dusky
brilliance. Still indignant and surprised, the Colonel lifted his voice
sharply.
"What the devil are you doing here?--sleeping when you ought to be at
work! Get out! And see here, next week cotton chopping begins--you'll go
to the fields or to the chain-gang. I'll have no more of your loafing
about my place."
Awaiting no reply, the Colonel, already half ashamed of his vehemence,
stormed out into the sunlight and climbed upon his bay mare.
But Zora still stood silent in the shadow of the Silver Fleece, hearing
and yet not hearing. She was searching for the Way, groping for the
threads of life, seeking almost wildly to understand the foundations of
understanding, piteously asking for answer to the puzzle of life. All
the while the walls rose straight about her and narrow. To continue in
school meant charity, yet she had nowhere to go and nothing to go with.
To refuse to work for the Cresswells meant trouble for the school and
perhaps arrest for herself. To work in the fields meant endless toil and
a vista that opened upon death.
Like a hunted thing the girl turned and twisted in thought and faced
everywhere the blank Impossible. Cold and dreamlike without, her shut
teeth held back seething fires within, and a spirit of revolt that
gathered wildness as it grew. Above all flew the dream, the phantasy,
the memory of the past, the vision of the future. Over and over she
whispered to herself: "This is not the End; this can not be the End."
Somehow, somewhere, would come salvation. Yet what it would be and what
she expected she did not know. She sought the Way, but what way and
whither she did not know, she dared not dream.
One thing alone lay in her wild fancy like a great and wonderful fact
dragging the dream to earth and anchoring it there. That was the Silver
Fleece. Like a brooding mother, Zora had watched it. She knew how the
gin had been cleaned for its pressing and how it had been baled apart
and carefully covered. She knew how proud Colonel Cresswell was of it
and how daily he had visitors to see it and finger the wide white wound
in its side.
"Yes, sir, grown on my place, by my niggers, sir!" he assured them; and
they marvelled.
To Zora's mind, this beautiful baled fibre was hers; it typified
happiness; it was an holy thing which profane hands had stolen. When it
came back to her (as come it must, she cried with clenched hands) it
would bring happiness; not the great Happiness--that was gone
forever--but illumination, atonement, and something of the power and the
glory. So, involuntarily almost, she haunted the cotton storehouse,
flitting like a dark and silent ghost in among the workmen, greeting
them with her low musical voice, warding them with the cold majesty of
her eyes; each day afraid of some last parting, each night
triumphant--it was still there!
The Colonel--Zora already forgotten--rode up to the Cresswell Oaks,
pondering darkly. It was bad enough to contemplate Helen's marriage in
distant prospect, but the sudden, almost peremptory desire for marrying
at Eastertide, a little less than two months away, was absurd. There
were "business reasons arising from the presidential campaign in the
fall," John Taylor had telegraphed; but there was already too much
business in the arrangement to suit the Colonel. With Harry it was
different. Indeed it was his own quiet suggestion that made John Taylor
hurry matters.
Harry trusted to the novelty of his father's new wealth to make the
latter complacent; he himself felt an impatient longing for the haven of
a home. He had been too long untethered. He distrusted himself. The
devil within was too fond of taking the bit in his teeth. He would
remember to his dying day one awful shriek in the night, as of a soul
tormenting and tormented. He wanted the protection of a good woman, and
sometimes against the clear whiteness of her letters so joyous and
generous, even if a bit prim and didactic, he saw a vision of himself
reflected as he was, and he feared.
It was distinctively disconcerting to Colonel Cresswell to find Harry
quite in favor of early nuptials, and to learn that the sole objection
even in Helen's mind was the improbability of getting a wedding-gown in
time. Helen had all a child's naive love for beautiful and dainty
things, and a wedding-gown from Paris had been her life dream. On this
point, therefore, there ensued spirited arguments and much
correspondence, and both her brother and her lover evinced
characteristic interest in the planning.
Said Harry: "Sis, I'll cable to Paris today. They can easily hurry the
thing along."
Helen was delighted; she handed over a telegram just received from John
Taylor. "Send me, express, two bales best cotton you can get."
The Colonel read the message. "I don't see the connection between this
and hurrying up a wedding-gown," he growled. None of them discerned the
handwriting of Destiny.
"Neither do I," said Harry, who detected yielding in his father's tone.
"But we'd better send him the two prize bales; it will be a fine
advertisement of our plantation, and evidently he has a surprise in
store for us."
The Colonel affected to hesitate, but next morning the Silver Fleece
went to town.
Zora watched it go, and her heart swelled and died within her. She
walked to town, to the station. She did not see Mrs. Vanderpool arriving
from New Orleans; but Mrs. Vanderpool saw her, and looked curiously at
the tall, tragic figure that leaned so dolorously beside the freight
car. The bales were loaded into the express car; the train pulled away,
its hoarse snorting waking vague echoes in the forest beyond. But to the
girl who stood at the End, looking outward to darkness, those echoes
roared like the crack of doom. A passing band of contract hands called
to her mockingly, and one black giant, laughing loudly, gripped her
hand.
"Come, honey," he shouted, "you'se a'dreaming! Come on, honey!"
She turned abruptly and gripped his hand, as one drowning grips anything
offered--gripped till he winced. She laughed a loud mirthless laugh,
that came pouring like a sob from her deep lungs.
"Come on!" she mocked, and joined them.
They were a motley crowd, ragged, swaggering, jolly. There were husky,
big-limbed youths, and bold-faced, loud-tongued girls. To-morrow they
would start up-country to some backwoods barony in the kingdom of
cotton, and work till Christmas time. Today was the last in town; there
was craftily advanced money in their pockets and riot in their hearts.
In the gathering twilight they marched noisily through the streets; in
their midst, wide-eyed and laughing almost hysterically, marched Zora.
Mrs. Vanderpool meantime rode thoughtfully out of town toward Cresswell
Oaks. She was returning from witnessing the Mardi Gras festivities at
New Orleans and at the urgent invitation of the Cresswells had stopped
off. She might even stay to the wedding if the new plans matured.
Mrs. Vanderpool was quite upset. Her French maid, on whom she had
depended absolutely for five years or more, had left her.
"I think I want to try a colored maid," she told the Cresswells,
laughingly, as they drove home. "They have sweet voices and they can't
doff their uniform. Helene without her cap and apron was often mistaken
for a lady, and while I was in New Orleans a French confectioner married
her under some such delusion. Now, haven't you a girl about here who
would do?"
"No," declared Harry decisively, but his sister suggested that she might
ask Miss Smith at the colored school.
Again Mrs. Vanderpool laughed, but after tea she wandered idly down the
road. The sun behind the swamp was crimsoning the world. Mrs. Vanderpool
strolled alone to the school, and saw Sarah Smith. There was no
cordiality in the latter's greeting, but when she heard the caller's
errand her attention was at once arrested and held. The interests of her
charges were always uppermost in her mind.
"Can't I have the girl Zora?" Mrs. Vanderpool at last inquired.
Miss Smith started, for she was thinking of Zora at that very instant.
The girl was later than usual, and she was momentarily expecting to see
her tall form moving languidly up the walk.
She gave Mrs. Vanderpool a searching look. Mrs. Vanderpool glanced
involuntarily at her gown and smiled as she did it.
"Could I trust you with a human soul?" asked Miss Smith abruptly.
Mrs. Vanderpool looked up quickly. The half mocking answer that rose
involuntarily to her lips was checked. Within, Mrs. Vanderpool was a
little puzzled at herself. Why had she asked for this girl? She had felt
a strange interest in her--a peculiar human interest since she first saw
her and as she saw her again this afternoon. But would she make a
satisfactory maid? Was it not a rather dangerous experiment? Why had she
asked for her? She certainly had not intended to when she entered the
house.
In the silence Miss Smith continued: "Here is a child in whom the
fountains of the great deep are suddenly broken up. With peace and care
she would find herself, for she is strong. But here there is no peace.
Slavery of soul and body awaits her and I am powerless to protect her.
She must go away. That going away may make or ruin her. She knows
nothing of working for wages and she has not the servant's humility; but
she has loyalty and pluck. For one she loves there is nothing she would
not do; but she cannot be driven. Or rather, if she is driven, it may
rouse in her the devil incarnate. She needs not exactly affection--she
would almost resent that--but intelligent interest and care. In return
for this she will gradually learn to serve and serve loyally. Frankly,
Mrs. Vanderpool, I would not have chosen you for this task of human
education. Indeed, you would have been my last thought--you seem to
me--I speak plainly--a worldly woman. Yet, perhaps--who can tell?--God
has especially set you to this task. At any rate, I have little choice.
I am at my wits' end. Elspeth, the mother of this child, is not long
dead; and here is the girl, beautiful, unprotected; and here am I,
almost helpless. She is in debt to the Cresswells, and they are pressing
the claim to her service. Take her if you can get her--it is, I fear,
her only chance. Mind you--if you can persuade her; and that may be
impossible."
"Where is she now?"
Miss Smith glanced out at the darkening landscape, and then at her
watch.
"I do not know; she's very late. She's given to wandering, but usually
she is here before this time."
"I saw her in town this afternoon," said Mrs. Vanderpool.
"Zora? In town?" Miss Smith rose. "I'll send her to you tomorrow," she
said quietly. Mrs. Vanderpool had hardly reached the Oaks before Miss
Smith was driving toward town.
A small cabin on the town's ragged fringe was crowded to suffocation.
Within arose noisy shouts, loud songs, and raucous laughter; the
scraping of a fiddle and whine of an accordion. Liquor began to appear
and happy faces grew red-eyed and sodden as the dances whirled. At the
edge of the orgy stood Zora, wild-eyed and bewildered, mad with the pain
that gripped her heart and hammered in her head, crying in tune with the
frenzied music--"the End--the End!"
Abruptly she recognized a face despite the wreck and ruin of its beauty.
"Bertie!" she cried as she seized the mother of little Emma by the arm.
The woman staggered and offered her glass.
"Drink," she cried, "drink and forget."
In a moment Zora sprang forward and seized the burning liquid in both
hands. A dozen hands clapped a devil's tattoo. A score of voices yelled
and laughed. The shriek of the music was drowned beneath the thunder of
stamping feet. Men reeled to singing women's arms, but above the roar
rose the song of the voice of Zora--she glided to the middle of the
room, standing tip-toed with skirts that curled and turned; she threw
back her head, raised the liquor to her lips, paused and looked into the
face of Miss Smith.
A silence fell like a lightning flash on the room as that white face
peered in at the door. Slowly Zora's hands fell and her eyes blinked as
though waking from some awful dream. She staggered toward the woman's
outstretched arms....
Late that night the girl lay close in Miss Smith's motherly embrace.
"I was going to hell!" she whispered, trembling.
"Why, Zora?" asked Miss Smith calmly.
"I couldn't find the Way--and I wanted to forget."
"People in hell don't forget," was the matter-of-fact comment. "And,
Zora, what way do you seek? The way where?"
Zora sat up in bed, and lifted a gray and stricken face.
"It's a lie," she cried, with hoarse earnedstness, "the way nowhere.
There is no Way! You know--I want _him_--I want nothing on earth but
him--and him I can't ever have."
The older woman drew her down tenderly.
"No, Zora," she said, "there's something you want more than him and
something you can have!"
"What?" asked the wondering girl.
"His respect," said Sarah Smith, "and I know the Way."
_Twenty-one_