The Quest of the Silver Fleece: A Novel Read online

  _Three_

  MISS MARY TAYLOR

  Miss Mary Taylor did not take a college course for the purpose ofteaching Negroes. Not that she objected to Negroes as humanbeings--quite the contrary. In the debate between the senior societiesher defence of the Fifteenth Amendment had been not only a notable bitof reasoning, but delivered with real enthusiasm. Nevertheless, when theend of the summer came and the only opening facing her was the teachingof children at Miss Smith's experiment in the Alabama swamps, it must befrankly confessed that Miss Taylor was disappointed.

  Her dream had been a post-graduate course at Bryn Mawr; but that was outof the question until money was earned. She had pictured herself earningthis by teaching one or two of her "specialties" in some private schoolnear New York or Boston, or even in a Western college. The South she hadnot thought of seriously; and yet, knowing of its delightfulhospitality and mild climate, she was not averse to Charleston or NewOrleans. But from the offer that came to teach Negroes--country Negroes,and little ones at that--she shrank, and, indeed, probably would haverefused it out of hand had it not been for her queer brother, John. JohnTaylor, who had supported her through college, was interested in cotton.Having certain schemes in mind, he had been struck by the fact that theSmith School was in the midst of the Alabama cotton-belt.

  "Better go," he had counselled, sententiously. "Might learn somethinguseful down there."

  She had been not a little dismayed by the outlook, and had protestedagainst his blunt insistence.

  "But, John, there's no society--just elementary work--"

  John had met this objection with, "Humph!" as he left for his office.Next day he had returned to the subject.

  "Been looking up Tooms County. Find some Cresswells there--bigplantations--rated at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Someothers, too; big cotton county."

  "You ought to know, John, if I teach Negroes I'll scarcely see much ofpeople in my own class."

  "Nonsense! Butt in. Show off. Give 'em your Greek--and study Cotton. Atany rate, I say go."

  And so, howsoever reluctantly, she had gone.

  The trial was all she had anticipated, and possibly a bit more. She wasa pretty young woman of twenty-three, fair and rather daintily moulded.In favorable surroundings, she would have been an aristocrat and anepicure. Here she was teaching dirty children, and the smell of confusedodors and bodily perspiration was to her at times unbearable.

  Then there was the fact of their color: it was a fact so insistent, sofatal she almost said at times, that she could not escape it.Theoretically she had always treated it with disdainful ease.

  "What's the mere color of a human soul's skin," she had cried to aWellesley audience and the audience had applauded with enthusiasm. Buthere in Alabama, brought closely and intimately in touch with these darkskinned children, their color struck her at first with a sort ofterror--it seemed ominous and forbidding. She found herself shrinkingaway and gripping herself lest they should perceive. She could not helpbut think that in most other things they were as different from her asin color. She groped for new ways to teach colored brains and marshalcolored thoughts and the result was puzzling both to teacher andstudent. With the other teachers she had little commerce. They were inno sense her sort of folk. Miss Smith represented the older New Englandof her parents--honest, inscrutable, determined, with a conscience whichshe worshipped, and utterly unselfish. She appealed to Miss Taylor'sruddier and daintier vision but dimly and distantly as some memory ofthe past. The other teachers were indistinct personalities, always verybusy and very tired, and talking "school-room" with their meals. MissTaylor was soon starving for human companionship, for the lightertouches of life and some of its warmth and laughter. She wanted a glanceof the new books and periodicals and talk of great philanthropies andreforms. She felt out of the world, shut in and mentally anaemic; greatas the "Negro Problem" might be as a world problem, it looked sordid andsmall at close range. So for the hundredth time she was thinking today,as she walked alone up the lane back of the barn, and then slowly downthrough the bottoms. She paused a moment and nodded to the two boys atwork in a young cotton field.

  "Cotton!"

  She paused. She remembered with what interest she had always read ofthis little thread of the world. She had almost forgotten that it washere within touch and sight. For a moment something of the vision ofCotton was mirrored in her mind. The glimmering sea of delicate leaveswhispered and murmured before her, stretching away to the Northward.She remembered that beyond this little world it stretched on and on--howfar she did not know--but on and on in a great trembling sea, and thefoam of its mighty waters would one time flood the ends of the earth.

  She glimpsed all this with parted lips, and then sighed impatiently.There might be a bit of poetry here and there, but most of this placewas such desperate prose.

  She glanced absently at the boys.

  One was Bles Alwyn, a tall black lad. (Bles, she mused,--now who wouldthink of naming a boy "Blessed," save these incomprehensible creatures!)Her regard shifted to the green stalks and leaves again, and she startedto move away. Then her New England conscience stepped in. She ought notto pass these students without a word of encouragement or instruction.

  "Cotton is a wonderful thing, is it not, boys?" she said rather primly.The boys touched their hats and murmured something indistinctly. MissTaylor did not know much about cotton, but at least one more remarkseemed called for.

  "How long before the stalks will be ready to cut?" she asked carelessly.The farther boy coughed and Bles raised his eyes and looked at her; thenafter a pause he answered slowly. (Oh! these people were so slow--now aNew England boy would have answered and asked a half-dozen questions inthe time.)

  "I--I don't know," he faltered.

  "Don't know! Well, of all things!" inwardly commented MissTaylor--"literally born in cotton, and--Oh, well," as much as to ask,"What's the use?" She turned again to go.

  "What is planted over there?" she asked, although she really didn'tcare.

  "Goobers," answered the smaller boy.

  "Goobers?" uncomprehendingly.

  "Peanuts," Bles specified.

  "Oh!" murmured Miss Taylor. "I see there are none on the vines yet. Isuppose, though, it's too early for them."

  Then came the explosion. The smaller boy just snorted with irrepressiblelaughter and bolted across the fields. And Bles--was Miss Taylordeceived?--or was he chuckling? She reddened, drew herself up, and then,dropping her primness, rippled with laughter.

  "What is the matter, Bles?" she asked.

  He looked at her with twinkling eyes.

  "Well, you see, Miss Taylor, it's like this: farming don't seem to beyour specialty."

  The word was often on Miss Taylor's lips, and she recognized it. Despiteherself she smiled again.

  "Of course, it isn't--I don't know anything about farming. But what didI say so funny?"

  Bles was now laughing outright.

  "Why, Miss Taylor! I declare! Goobers don't grow on the tops of vines,but underground on the roots--like yams."

  "Is that so?"

  "Yes, and we--we don't pick cotton stalks except for kindling."

  "I must have been thinking of hemp. But tell me more about cotton."

  His eyes lighted, for cotton was to him a very real and beautiful thing,and a life-long companion, yet not one whose friendship had beencoarsened and killed by heavy toil. He leaned against his hoe and talkedhalf dreamily--where had he learned so well that dream-talk?

  "We turn up the earth and sow it soon after Christmas. Then pretty soonthere comes a sort of greenness on the black land and it swells andgrows and, and--shivers. Then stalks shoot up with three or four leaves.That's the way it is now, see? After that we chop out the weak stalks,and the strong ones grow tall and dark, till I think it must be like theocean--all green and billowy; then come little flecks here and thereand the sea is all filled with flowers--flowers like little bells, blueand purple and white."

  "Ah! that must be beau
tiful," sighed Miss Taylor, wistfully, sinking tothe ground and clasping her hands about her knees.

  "Yes, ma'am. But it's prettiest when the bolls come and swell and burst,and the cotton covers the field like foam, all misty--"

  She bent wondering over the pale plants. The poetry of the thing beganto sing within her, awakening her unpoetic imagination, and shemurmured:

  "The Golden Fleece--it's the Silver Fleece!"

  He harkened.

  "What's that?" he asked.

  "Have you never heard of the Golden Fleece, Bles?"

  "No, ma'am," he said eagerly; then glancing up toward the Cresswellfields, he saw two white men watching them. He grasped his hoe andstarted briskly to work.

  "Some time you'll tell me, please, won't you?"

  She glanced at her watch in surprise and arose hastily.

  "Yes, with pleasure," she said moving away--at first very fast, and thenmore and more slowly up the lane, with a puzzled look on her face.

  She began to realize that in this pleasant little chat the fact of theboy's color had quite escaped her; and what especially puzzled her wasthat this had not happened before. She had been here four months, andyet every moment up to now she seemed to have been vividly, almostpainfully conscious, that she was a white woman talking to black folk.Now, for one little half-hour she had been a woman talking to a boy--no,not even that: she had been talking--just talking; there were no personsin the conversation, just things--one thing: Cotton.

  She started thinking of cotton--but at once she pulled herself back tothe other aspect. Always before she had been veiled from these folk: whohad put the veil there? Had she herself hung it before her soul, or hadthey hidden timidly behind its other side? Or was it simply a brutefact, regardless of both of them?

  The longer she thought, the more bewildered she grew. There seemed noanalogy that she knew. Here was a unique thing, and she climbed to herbedroom and stared at the stars.