The Quest of the Silver Fleece

by W. E. B. Dubois

  “Robert, here you are almost finished, and my heart is set on your going to Atlanta University and finishing college. With your fine voice and talent for drawing—”

  A dogged look settled on Robert’s young bright face, and the speaker paused.

  “What’s the use, Miss Smith—what opening is there for a—a nigger with an 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 heard that deadening phrase in the last year!—“that there’s no use. That farming is the only thing we ought to try to do, and I reckon she thinks there 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 settled here in a decent home with a family, running a farm. But, Robert, farming doesn’t call for less intelligence than other things; it calls for more. It is because the world thinks any training good enough for a farmer that the Southern farmer is today practically at the mercy of his keener and more intelligent fellows. And of all people, Robert, your people need trained intelligence to cope with this problem of farming here. Without intelligence and training and some capital it is the wildest nonsense to think you can lead your people out of slavery. Look round you.” She told him of the visitors. “Are they not hard working honest 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 against the 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 a half-ignorant boy.”

  “I’ll think of it,” returned the boy soberly. “I reckon you’re right. I know Miss Taylor don’t think much of us. But I’m tired of waiting; I want 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 he hung his head.

  “I wanted to talk about it,” he awkwardly responded, turning slowly away. 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 seemed drawing near. She had not dreamed the Tolliver place was for sale. The old man must be hard pressed to sell to the Cresswells.

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

  She threw a veil over her hair, and opened the door. A woman stood there, who shrank and cowered, as if used to blows. Miss Smith eyed her grimly, 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 unmistakable traces of beauty in her golden face and soft brown hair. Miss Smith contemplated her sadly. Here was her most haunting failure, this girl whom she first had seen twelve years ago in her wonderful girlish comeliness. She had struggled and fought for her, but the forces of the devil had triumphed. She caught glimpses of her now and then, but today was the first time she had spoken to her for ten years. She saw the tears 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 little girl, Miss Smith, ten years old, and—and—I’m afraid for her; I want you 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 affirmed 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 an utter 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 the child,—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 more things than my weak strength can do. Good-bye.”

  Miss Smith stood a long time in the doorway, watching the fading figure and 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 who stopped at the gate. It was her neighbor, Tolliver—a gaunt, yellow-faced white man, ragged, rough, and unkempt; one of the poor whites 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, and she went.

  “Say,” he roughly opened up, “I’ve got to sell some land and them damn Cresswells are after it. You can have it for five thousand dollars if you 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 the Cresswell oaks. She had never been within the gates before, and she looked about thoughtfully. The great trees in their regular curving rows must have been planted more than half a century ago. The lawn was well tended and the flowers. Yes, there were signs of taste and wealth. “But it was built on a moan,” cried Miss Smith to herself, passionately, and she would not look round any more, but stared straight ahead where she saw old Colonel Cresswell smoking and reading on the verandah.

  The Colonel saw her, too, and was uneasy, for he knew that Miss Smith had a sharp tongue and a most disconcerting method of argument, which he, as a Southern gentleman, courteous to all white females, even if they did eat with “niggers,” could not properly answer. He received her with courtesy, offered a chair, laid aside his cigar, and essayed some general remarks on cotton weather. But Miss Smith plunged into her subject:

  “Colonel Cresswell, I’m thinking of raising some money from a mortgage on our school property.”

  The Colonel’s face involuntarily lighted up. He thought he saw the beginning of the end of an institution which had been a thorn in his flesh ever since Tolliver, in a fit of rage, had sold land for a Negro school.

  “H’m,” he reflected deprecatingly, wiping his brow.

  “I need some ready money,” she continued, “to keep from curtailing our work.”

  “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 have two hundred acres.” It was not for nothing that this lady had been born in 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 the Jefferson Bank,” he said politely. “They may accommodate you—how much would you want?”

  “Five thousand dollars,” Miss Smith replied. Then she hesitated. That would buy the land, to be sure; but money was needed to develop and run it; to install tenants; and then, too, for new teachers. But she said nothing more, and, nodding to his polite bow, departed. Colonel Cresswell had noticed her hesitation, and thought of it as he settled to his cigar again.

  Bles Alwyn arose next morning and examined the sky critically. He feared rain. The season had been quite wet enough, particularly down on the swamp land, and but yesterday Bles had viewed his dykes with apprehension for the black pool scowled about them. He dared not think what a long heavy rain might do to the wonderful island of cotton which now stood fully five feet high, with flowers and squares and budding bolls. It might not rain, but the safest thing would be to work at those dykes, 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 have observed his anxiety, but today she was agitated. She knew she was taking a critical step.

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

  Miss Smith was looking at her own skies and despite the promised sunrise they loomed darkly. Five thousand was needed for the land and at least another thousand for repairs. Two thousand would “buy” a half dozen desirable tenants by paying their debts to their present landlords. Then two thousand would be wanted for new teachers and a carpenter shop—ten thousand dollars!

  It was a great temptation. And yet, once in the hands of these pastmasters of debt-manipulation, would her school be safe? Suppose, after all, this Grey gift—but she caught her breath sharply just as a wet splash of rain struck upon her forehead. No. God could not be so cruel. She pushed her bonnet back: how good and cool the water felt! But on 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. This rain might stay for days; it looked like such a downpour; and that would mean the end of the Silver Fleece; the end of Zora’s hopes; the end of everything. He gulped in despairing anger and hit the staid old horse the smartest tap she had known all summer.

  “Why, Bles, what’s the matter?” called Miss Smith, as the horse started forward. He murmured something about getting wet and drew up at the Toombsville bank.

  Miss Smith was invited politely into the private parlor. She explained her business. The President was there and Colonel Cresswell and one other local director.

  “I have come for a mortgage. Our land is, as you know, gentlemen, worth at least ten thousand dollars; the buildings cost fifteen thousand dollars; our property is, therefore, conservatively valued at twenty-five thousand dollars. Now I want to mortgage it for”—she hesitated—“five thousand dollars.”

  Colonel Cresswell was silent, but the president said:

  “Money is rather scarce just now, Miss Smith; but it happens that I have ten thousand dollars on hand, which we prefer, however, to loan in one lump sum. Now, if the security were ample, I think perhaps you might get this ten thousand dollars.”

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

  “Very well,” she declared her decision, and they handed her the preliminary papers. She took the pen and glanced at Mr. Cresswell; he was smiling slightly, but nevertheless she signed her name grimly, in a large round hand, “Sarah Smith.”

  Thirteen

  MRS. GREY GIVES A DINNER

  The Hon. Charles Smith, Miss Sarah’s brother, was walking swiftly uptown from Mr. Easterly’s Wall Street office and his face was pale. At last the Cotton Combine was to all appearances an assured fact and he was slated for the Senate. The price he had paid was high: he was to represent the interests of the new trust and sundry favorable measures were already drafted and reposing in the safe of the combine’s legal department. Among others was one relating to child labor, another that would effect certain changes in the tariff, and a proposed law providing for a cotton bale of a shape and dimensions different from the customary—the last constituting a particularly clever artifice which, under the guise of convenience in handling, would necessitate the installation of entirely new gin and compress machinery, to be supplied, of course, by the trust.

  As Mr. Smith drew near Mrs. Grey’s Murray Hill residence his face had melted to a cynical smile. After all why should he care? He had tried independence and philanthropy and failed. Why should he not be as other men? He had seen many others that very day swallow the golden bait and promise everything. They were gentlemen. Why should he pose as better than his fellows? There was young Cresswell. Did his aristocratic air prevent his succumbing to the lure of millions and promising the influence of his father and the whole Farmer’s League to the new project? Mr. Smith snapped his fingers and rang the bell. The door opened softly. The dark woodwork of the old English wainscoting glowed with the crimson flaming of logs in the wide fireplace. There was just the touch of early autumn chill in the air without, that made both the fire and the table with its soft linen, gold and silver plate, and twinkling glasses a warming, satisfying sight.

  Mrs. Grey was a portly woman, inclined to think much of her dinner and her clothes, both of which were always rich and costly. She was not herself a notably intelligent woman; she greatly admired intelligence or whatever looked to her like intelligence in others. Her money, too, was to her an ever worrying mystery and surprise, which she found herself always scheming to husband shrewdly and spend philanthropically—a difficult combination.

  As she awaited her guests she surveyed the table with both satisfaction and disquietude, for her social functions were few. tonight there were—she checked them off on her fingers—Sir James Creighton, the rich English manufacturer, and Lady Creighton, Mr. and Mrs. Vanderpool, Mr. Harry Cresswell and his sister, John Taylor and his sister, and Mr. Charles Smith, whom the evening papers mentioned as likely to be United States Senator from New Jersey—a selection of guests that had been determined, unknown to the hostess, by the meeting of cotton interests earlier in the day.

  Mrs. Grey’s chef was high-priced and efficient, and her butler was the envy of many; consequently, she knew the dinner would be good. To her intense satisfaction, it was far more than this. It was a most agreeable couple of hours; all save perhaps Mr. Smith unbent, the Englishman especially, and the Vanderpools were most gracious; but if the general pleasure was owing to any one person particularly it was to Mr. Harry Cresswell. Mrs. Grey had met Southerners before, but not intimately, and she always had in mind vividly their cruelty to “poor Negroes,” a subject she made a point of introducing forthwith. She was therefore most agreeably surprised to hear Mr. Cresswell express himself so cordially a
s approving of Negro education.

  “Why, I thought,” said Mrs. Grey, “that you Southerners rather disapproved—or at least—”

  Mr. Cresswell inclined his head courteously.

  “We Southerners, my dear Mrs. Grey, are responsible for a variety of reputations.” And he told an anecdote that set the table laughing. “Seriously, though,” he continued, “we are not as black as the blacks paint us, although on the whole I prefer that Helen should marry—a white man.”

  They all glanced at Miss Cresswell, who lay softly back in her chair like a white lily, gleaming and bejewelled, her pale face flushing under the scrutiny; Mrs. Grey was horrified.

  “Why—why the idea!” she sputtered. “Why, Mr. Cresswell, how can you conceive of anything else—no Northerner dreams—”

  Mr. Cresswell sipped his wine slowly.

  “No—no—I do not think you do mean that—” He paused and the Englishman bent forward.

  “Really, now, you do not mean to say that there is a danger of—of amalgamation, do you?” he sang.

  Mr. Cresswell explained. No, of course there was no immediate danger; but when people were suddenly thrust beyond their natural station, filled with wild ideas and impossible ambitions, it meant terrible danger to Southern white women.

  “But you believe in some education?” asked Mary Taylor.

  “I believe in the training of people to their highest capacity.” The Englishman here heartily seconded him.

  “But,” Cresswell added significantly, “capacity differs enormously between races.”

  The Vanderpools were sure of this and the Englishman, instancing India, became quite eloquent. Mrs. Grey was mystified, but hardly dared admit it. The general trend of the conversation seemed to be that most individuals needed to be submitted to the sharpest scrutiny before being allowed much education, and as for the “lower races” it was simply criminal to open such useless opportunities to them.

  “Why, I had a colored servant-girl once,” laughed Mrs. Vanderpool by way of climax, “who spent half her wages in piano lessons.”