The Quest of the Silver Fleece: A Novel Read online

  _Twelve_

  THE PROMISE

  Miss Smith sat with her face buried in her hands while the tearstrickled silently through her thin fingers. Before her lay the letter,read a dozen times:

  "Old Mrs. Grey has been to see me, and she has announced her intentionof endowing five colored schools, yours being one. She asked if $500,000would do it. She has plenty of money, so I told her $750,000 would bebetter--$150,000 apiece. She's arranging for a Board of Trust, etc.You'll probably hear from her soon. You've been so worried aboutexpenses that I thought I'd send this word on; I knew you'd be glad."

  Glad? Dear God, how flat the word fell! For thirty years she had sownthe seed, planting her life-blood in this work, that had become themarrow of her soul.

  Successful? No, it had not been successful; but it had been human.Through yonder doorway had trooped an army of hundreds upon hundreds ofbright and dull, light and dark, eager and sullen faces. There had beengood and bad, honest and deceptive, frank and furtive. Some had caught,kindled and flashed to ambition and achievement; some, glowing dimly,had plodded on in a slow, dumb faithful work worth while; and yet othershad suddenly exploded, hurtling human fragments to heaven and to hell.Around this school home, as around the centre of some little universe,had whirled the sorrowful, sordid, laughing, pulsing drama of a world:birth pains, and the stupor of death; hunger and pale murder; the riotof thirst and the orgies of such red and black cabins as Elspeth's,crouching in the swamp.

  She groaned as she read of the extravagances of the world and saw herown vanishing revenues; but the funds continued to dwindle until SarahSmith asked herself: "What will become of this school when I die?" Withtrembling fingers she had sat down to figure how many teachers must bedropped next year, when her brother's letter came, and she slipped toher knees and prayed.

  Mrs. Grey's decision was due in no little way to Mary Taylor's reports.Slowly but surely the girl had begun to think that she had found herselfin this new world. She would never be attuned to it thoroughly, for shewas set for different music. The veil of color and race still hungthickly between her and her pupils; and yet she seemed to see somepoints of penetration. No one could meet daily a hundred or more ofthese light-hearted, good-natured children without feeling drawn tothem. No one could cross the thresholds of the cabins and not see theold and well-known problems of life and striving. More and more,therefore, the work met Miss Taylor's approval and she told Mrs. Greyso.

  At the same time Mary Taylor had come to some other definiteconclusions: she believed it wrong to encourage the ambitions of thesechildren to any great extent; she believed they should be servants andfarmers, content to work under present conditions until those conditionscould be changed; and she believed that the local white aristocracy,helped by Northern philanthropy, should take charge of such gradualchanges.

  These conclusions she did not pretend to have originated; but sheadopted them from reading and conversation, after hesitating for a yearbefore such puzzling contradictions as Bles Alwyn and Harry Cresswell.For her to conclude to treat Bles Alwyn as a man despite his color wasas impossible as to think Mr. Cresswell a criminal. Some compromise wasimperative which would save her the pleasure of Mr. Cresswell's companyand at the same time leave open a way of fulfilling the world's duty tothis black boy. She thought she had found this compromise and she wroteMrs. Grey suggesting a chain of endowed Negro schools under themanagement of trustees composed of Northern business men and localSouthern whites. Mrs. Grey acquiesced gladly and announced her plan,eventually writing Miss Smith of her decision "to second her nobleefforts in helping the poor colored people," and she hoped to have theplan under way before next fall.

  The sharpness of Miss Smith's joy did not let her dwell on the proposed"Board of Trust"; of course, it would be a board of friends of theschool.

  She sat in her office looking out across the land. School had closed forthe year and Bles with the carryall was just taking Miss Taylor to thetrain with her trunk and bags. Far up the road she could see dotted hereand there the little dirty cabins of Cresswell's tenants--the Cresswelldomain that lay like a mighty hand around the school, ready at a word tosqueeze its life out. Only yonder, to the eastward, lay the way out; thefive hundred acres of the Tolliver plantation, which the school neededso sadly for its farm and community. But the owner was a hard andignorant white man, hating "niggers" only a shade more than he hatedwhite aristocrats of the Cresswell type. He had sold the school itsfirst land to pique the Cresswells; but he would not sell any more, shewas sure, even now when the promise of wealth faced the school.

  She lay back and closed her eyes and fell lightly asleep. As she sleptan old woman came toiling up the hill northward from the school, andout of the eastward spur of the Cresswell barony. She was fat and black,hooded and aproned, with great round head and massive bosom. Her facewas dull and heavy and homely, her old eyes sorrowful. She movedswiftly, carrying a basket on her arm. Opposite her, to the southward,but too far for sight, an old man came out of the lower Cresswell place,skirting the swamp. He was tall, black, and gaunt, part bald with tuftedhair, and a cowed and furtive look was in his eyes. One leg wascrippled, and he hobbled painfully.

  Up the road to the eastward that ran past the school, with the morningsun at his back, strode a young man, yellow, crisp-haired, strong-faced,with darkly knit brows. He greeted Bles and the teacher coldly, andmoved on in nervous haste. A woman, hurrying out of the westward swampup the path that led from Elspeth's, saw him and shrank back hastily.She turned quickly into the swamp and waited, looking toward the school.The old woman hurried into the back gate just as the old man appeared tothe southward on the road. The young man greeted him cordially and theystopped a moment to talk, while the hiding woman watched.

  "Howdy, Uncle Jim."

  "Howdy, son. Hit's hot, ain't it? How is you?"

  "Tolerable, how are you?"

  "Poorly, son, poorly--and worser in mind. I'se goin' up to talk to oldMiss."

  "So am I, but I just see Aunt Rachel going in. We'd better wait."

  Miss Smith started up at the timid knocking, and rubbed her eyes. It waslong since she had slept in the daytime and she was annoyed at suchlaziness. She opened the back door and led the old woman to the office.

  "Now, what have you got there?" she demanded, eyeing the basket.

  "Just a little chicken fo' you and a few aigs."

  "Oh, you are so thoughtful!" Sarah Smith's was a grateful heart.

  "Go 'long now--hit ain't a thing."

  Then came a pause, the old woman sliding into the proffered seat, whileover her genial, dimpled smile there dropped a dull veil of care. Hereyes shifted uneasily. Miss Smith tried not to notice the change.

  "Well, are you all moved, Aunt Rachel?" she inquired cheerfully.

  "No'm, and we ain't gwine to move."

  "But I thought it was all arranged."

  "It was," gloomily, "but de ole Cunnel, he won't let us go."

  The listener was instantly sympathetic. "Why not?" she asked.

  "He says we owes him."

  "But didn't you settle at Christmas?"

  "Yas'm; but when he found we was goin' away, he looked up some moredebts."

  "How much?"

  "I don't know 'zactly--more'n a hundred dollars. Den de boys done got indat trouble, and he paid their fines."

  "What was the trouble?"

  "Well, one was a-gambling, and the other struck the overseer what wasa-whippin' him."

  "Whipping him!"--in horrified exclamation, quite as much at AuntRachel's matter-of-fact way of regarding the matter as at the deeditself.

  "Yas'm. He didn't do his work right and he whipped him. I speck heneeded it."

  "But he's a grown man," Miss Smith urged earnestly.

  "Yas'm; he's twenty now, and big."

  "Whipped him!" Miss Smith repeated. "And so you can't leave?"

  "No'm, he say he'll sell us out and put us in de chain-gang if we go.The boys is plumb mad, but I'se a-pleadin' with 'em not to do n
othin'rash."

  "But--but I thought they had already started to work a crop on theTolliver place?"

  "Yes'm, dey had; but, you see, dey were arrested, and then CunnelCresswell took 'em and 'lowed they couldn't leave his place. Ol' manTolliver was powerful mad."

  "Why, Aunt Rachel, it's slavery!" cried the lady in dismay. Aunt Racheldid not offer to dispute her declaration.

  "Yas'm, hit's slavery," she agreed. "I hates it mighty bad, too, 'causeI wanted de little chillens in school; but--" The old woman broke downand sobbed.

  A knocking came at the door; hastily wiping her eyes Aunt Rachel rose.

  "I'll--I'll see what I can do, Aunt Rachel--I must do something,"murmured Miss Smith hastily, as the woman departed, and an old black mancame limping in. Miss Smith looked up in surprise.

  "I begs pardon, Mistress--I begs pardon. Good-morning."

  "Good-morning--" she hesitated.

  "Sykes--Jim Sykes--that's me."

  "Yes, I've heard of you, Mr. Sykes; you live over south of the swamp."

  "Yes, ma'am, that's me; and I'se got a little shack dar and a bit ofland what I'se trying to buy."

  "Of Colonel Cresswell?"

  "Yas'm, of de Cunnel."

  "And how long have you been buying it?"

  "Going on ten year now; and dat's what I comes to ask you about."

  "Goodness me! And how much have you paid a year?"

  "I gen'rally pays 'bout three bales of cotton a year."

  "Does he furnish you rations?"

  "Only sugar and coffee and a little meat now and then."

  "What does it amount to a year?"

  "I doesn't rightly know--but I'se got some papers here."

  Miss Smith looked them over and sighed. It was the same old tale ofblind receipts for money "on account"--no items, no balancing. By hishelp she made out that last year his total bill at Cresswell's store wasperhaps forty dollars.

  "An' last year's bill was bigger'n common 'cause I hurt my leg workingat the gin and had to have some medicine."

  "Why, as far as I can see, Mr. Sykes, you've paid Cresswell about athousand dollars in the last ten years. How large is your place?"

  "About twenty acres."

  "And what were you to pay for it?"

  "Four hundred."

  "Have you got the deed?"

  "Yes'm, but I ain't finished paying yet; de Cunnel say as how I owes himtwo hundred dollars still, and I can't see it. Dat's why I come overhere to talk wid you."

  "Where is the deed?"

  He handed it to her and her heart sank. It was no deed, but acomplicated contract binding the tenant hand and foot to the landlord.She sighed, he watching her eagerly.

  "I'se getting old," he explained, "and I ain't got nobody to take careof me. I can't work as I once could, and de overseers dey drives me toohard. I wants a little home to die in."

  Miss Smith's throat swelled. She couldn't tell him that he would neverget one at the present rate; she only said:

  "I'll--look this up. You come again next Saturday."

  Then sadly she watched the ragged old slave hobble away with hischerished "papers." He greeted the young man at the gate and passed out,while the latter walked briskly up to the door and knocked.

  "Why, how do you do, Robert?"

  "How do you do, Miss Smith?"

  "Well, are you getting things in shape so as to enter school early nextyear?"

  Robert looked embarrassed.

  "That's what I came to tell you, Miss Smith. Mr. Cresswell has offeredme forty acres of good land."

  Miss Smith looked disheartened.

  "Robert, here you are almost finished, and my heart is set on your goingto Atlanta University and finishing college. With your fine voice andtalent for drawing--"

  A dogged look settled on Robert's young bright face, and the speakerpaused.

  "What's the use, Miss Smith--what opening is there for a--a nigger withan education?"

  Miss Smith was shocked.

  "Why--why, every chance," she protested, "and where there's none _make_a chance!"

  "Miss Taylor says"--Miss Smith's heart sank; how often had she heardthat deadening phrase in the last year!--"that there's no use. Thatfarming is the only thing we ought to try to do, and I reckon she thinksthere ain't much chance even there."

  "Robert, farming is a noble calling. Whether you're suited to it or not,I don't yet know, but I'd like nothing better than to see you settledhere in a decent home with a family, running a farm. But, Robert,farming doesn't call for less intelligence than other things; it callsfor more. It is because the world thinks any training good enough for afarmer that the Southern farmer is today practically at the mercy of hiskeener and more intelligent fellows. And of all people, Robert, yourpeople need trained intelligence to cope with this problem of farminghere. Without intelligence and training and some capital it is thewildest nonsense to think you can lead your people out of slavery. Lookround you." She told him of the visitors. "Are they not hard workinghonest people?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Yet they are slaves--dumb driven cattle."

  "But they have no education."

  "And you have a smattering; therefore are ready to pit yourself againstthe organized plantation system without capital or experience. Robert,you may succeed; you may find your landlord honest and the way clear;but my advice to you is--finish your education, develop your talents,and then come to your life work a full-fledged man and not ahalf-ignorant boy."

  "I'll think of it," returned the boy soberly. "I reckon you're right. Iknow Miss Taylor don't think much of us. But I'm tired of waiting; Iwant to get to work."

  Miss Smith laid a kindly hand upon his shoulder.

  "I've been waiting thirty years, Robert," she said, with feeling, and hehung his head.

  "I wanted to talk about it," he awkwardly responded, turning slowlyaway. But Miss Smith stopped him.

  "Robert, where is the land Cresswell offers you?"

  "It's on the Tolliver place."

  "The Tolliver place?"

  "Yes, he is going to buy it."

  Miss Smith dismissed the boy absently and sat down. The crisis seemeddrawing near. She had not dreamed the Tolliver place was for sale. Theold man must be hard pressed to sell to the Cresswells.

  She started up. Why not go see him? Perhaps a mortgage on the strengthof the endowment? It was dangerous--but--

  She threw a veil over her hair, and opened the door. A woman stoodthere, who shrank and cowered, as if used to blows. Miss Smith eyed hergrimly, then slowly stepped back.

  "Come in," she commanded briefly, motioning the woman to a chair.

  But she stood, a pathetic figure, faded, worn, yet with unmistakabletraces of beauty in her golden face and soft brown hair. Miss Smithcontemplated her sadly. Here was her most haunting failure, this girlwhom she first had seen twelve years ago in her wonderful girlishcomeliness. She had struggled and fought for her, but the forces of thedevil had triumphed. She caught glimpses of her now and then, but todaywas the first time she had spoken to her for ten years. She saw thetears that gathered but did not fall; then her hands quivered.

  "Bertie," she began brokenly. The girl shivered, but stood aloof.

  "Miss Smith," she said. "No--don't talk--I'm bad--but I've got a littlegirl, Miss Smith, ten years old, and--and--I'm afraid for her; I wantyou to take her."

  "I have no place for one so young. And why are you afraid for her?"

  "The men there are beginning to notice her."

  "Where?"

  "At Elspeth's."

  "Do you stay there now?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "_He_ wants me to."

  "Must you do as he wants?"

  "Yes. But I want the child--different."

  "Don't _you_ want to be different?"

  The woman quivered again but she answered steadily: "No."

  Miss Smith sank into a chair and moistened her dry lips.

  "Elspeth's is an awful place," she af
firmed 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 anutter 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 thechild,--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 morethings than my weak strength can do. Good-bye."

  Miss Smith stood a long time in the doorway, watching the fading figureand 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 whostopped at the gate. It was her neighbor, Tolliver--a gaunt,yellow-faced white man, ragged, rough, and unkempt; one of the poorwhites 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, andshe went.

  "Say," he roughly opened up, "I've got to sell some land and them damnCresswells are after it. You can have it for five thousand dollars ifyou 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 theCresswell oaks. She had never been within the gates before, and shelooked about thoughtfully. The great trees in their regular curving rowsmust have been planted more than half a century ago. The lawn was welltended and the flowers. Yes, there were signs of taste and wealth. "Butit was built on a moan," cried Miss Smith to herself, passionately, andshe would not look round any more, but stared straight ahead where shesaw old Colonel Cresswell smoking and reading on the verandah.

  The Colonel saw her, too, and was uneasy, for he knew that Miss Smithhad a sharp tongue and a most disconcerting method of argument, whichhe, as a Southern gentleman, courteous to all white females, even ifthey did eat with "niggers," could not properly answer. He received herwith courtesy, offered a chair, laid aside his cigar, and essayed somegeneral remarks on cotton weather. But Miss Smith plunged into hersubject:

  "Colonel Cresswell, I'm thinking of raising some money from a mortgageon our school property."

  The Colonel's face involuntarily lighted up. He thought he saw thebeginning of the end of an institution which had been a thorn in hisflesh ever since Tolliver, in a fit of rage, had sold land for a Negroschool.

  "H'm," he reflected deprecatingly, wiping his brow.

  "I need some ready money," she continued, "to keep from curtailing ourwork."

  "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 havetwo hundred acres." It was not for nothing that this lady had been bornin 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 theJefferson Bank," he said politely. "They may accommodate you--how muchwould you want?"

  "Five thousand dollars," Miss Smith replied. Then she hesitated. Thatwould buy the land, to be sure; but money was needed to develop and runit; to install tenants; and then, too, for new teachers. But she saidnothing more, and, nodding to his polite bow, departed. ColonelCresswell had noticed her hesitation, and thought of it as he settled tohis cigar again.

  Bles Alwyn arose next morning and examined the sky critically. Hefeared rain. The season had been quite wet enough, particularly down onthe swamp land, and but yesterday Bles had viewed his dykes withapprehension for the black pool scowled about them. He dared not thinkwhat a long heavy rain might do to the wonderful island of cotton whichnow stood fully five feet high, with flowers and squares and buddingbolls. It might not rain, but the safest thing would be to work at thosedykes, 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.

  He started off, and hesitated. "Miss Smith, would Jim do to drive?"

  "No," sharply. "I want you particularly." At another time she might haveobserved his anxiety, but today she was agitated. She knew she wastaking a critical step.

  Slowly Bles hitched up. After all it might not rain, he argued as theyjogged toward town. In silence they rode on. Bles kept looking at theskies. The south was getting darker and darker. It might rain. It mightrain only an hour or so, but, suppose it should rain a day--two days--aweek?

  Miss Smith was looking at her own skies and despite the promised sunrisethey loomed darkly. Five thousand was needed for the land and at leastanother thousand for repairs. Two thousand would "buy" a half dozendesirable tenants by paying their debts to their present landlords. Thentwo thousand would be wanted for new teachers and a carpenter shop--tenthousand dollars!

  It was a great temptation. And yet, once in the hands of thesepast-masters of debt-manipulation, would her school be safe? Suppose,after all, this Grey gift--but she caught her breath sharply just as awet splash of rain struck upon her forehead. No. God could not be socruel. She pushed her bonnet back: how good and cool the water felt! Buton Bles as he raised the buggy top it felt hot and fiery.

  He felt the coming of some great calamity, the end of a dream. Thisrain might stay for days; it looked like such a downpour; and that wouldmean the end of the Silver Fleece; the end of Zora's hopes; the end ofeverything. He gulped in despairing anger and hit the staid old horsethe smartest tap she had known all summer.

  "Why, Bles, what's the matter?" called Miss Smith, as the horse startedforward. He murmured something about getting wet and drew up at theToomsville bank.

  Miss Smith was invited politely into the private parlor. She explainedher business. The President was there and Colonel Cresswell and oneother local director.

  "I have come for a mortgage. Our land is, as you know, gentlemen, worthat least ten thousand dollars; the buildings cost fifteen thousanddollars; our property is, therefore, conservatively valued attwenty-five thousand dollars. Now I want to mortgage it for"--shehesitated--"five thousand dollars."

  Colonel Cresswell was silent, but the president said:

  "Money is rather scarce just now, Miss Smith; but it happens that I haveten thousand dollars on hand, which we prefer, however, to loan in onelump sum. Now, if the security were ample, I think perhaps you might getthis ten thousand dollars."

  Miss Smith grew white; it was the sum she wanted. She tried to escapethe temptation, yet the larger amount was more than twice as desirableto her as the smaller, and she knew that they knew it. They were tryingto tempt her; they wanted as firm a hold on the school property aspossible. And yet, why should she hesitate? It was a risk, but thereturns would be enormous--she must do it. Besides, there was theendowment; it was certain; yes--she felt forced to close the bargain.

  "Very well," she declared her decision, and they handed her thepreliminary papers. She took the pen and glanced at Mr. Cresswell; hewas smiling slightly, but nevertheless she signed her name grimly, in alarge round hand, "Sarah Smith."