From the Cresswells and the Maxwells and others came loads of clothes for washing and mending. The Tolliver girls had simple dresses made, embroidery was ordered from town, and soon there would be the gardens and cotton fields. Mrs. Cresswell would saunter down of mornings. Sometimes she would talk to the big girls and play with the children; sometimes she would sit hidden in the forest, listening and glimpsing and thinking, thinking, till her head whirled and the world danced red before her eyes. today she rose wearily, for it was near noon, and started home. She saw Alwyn swing along the road to the school dining-room where he had charge of the students at the noonday meal.
Alwyn wanted Mrs. Cresswell’s judgment and advice. He was growing doubtful of his own estimate of women. Evidently something about his standards was wrong; consequently he made opportunities to talk with Mrs. Cresswell when she was about, hoping she would bring up the subject of Zora of her own accord. But she did not. She was too full of her own cares and troubles, and she was only too glad of willing and sympathetic ears into which to pour her thoughts. Miss Smith soon began to look on these conversations with some uneasiness. Black men and white women cannot talk together casually in the South and she did not know how far the North had put notions in Alwyn’s head.
Today both met each other almost eagerly.
Mrs. Cresswell had just had a bit of news which only he would fully appreciate.
“Have you heard of the Vanderpools?” she asked.
“No—except that he was appointed and confirmed at last.”
“Well, they had only arrived in France when he died of apoplexy. I do not know,” added Mrs. Cresswell, “I may be wrong and—I hope I’m not glad.” Then there leapt to her mind a hypothetical question which had to do with her own curious situation. It was characteristic of her to brood and then restlessly to seek relief in consulting the one person near who knew her story. She started to open the subject again today.
But Alwyn, his own mind full, spoke first and rapidly. He, too, had turned to her as he saw her come from Zora’s home. He must know more about the girl. He could no longer endure this silence. Zora beneath her apparent frankness was impenetrable, and he felt that she carefully avoided him, although she did it so deftly that he felt rather than observed it. Miss Smith still systematically snubbed him when he broached the subject of Zora. With others he did not speak; the matter seemed too delicate and sacred, and he always had an awful dread lest sometime, somewhere, a chance and fatal word would be dropped, a breath of evil gossip which would shatter all. He had hated to obtrude his troubles on Mrs. Cresswell, who seemed so torn in soul. But today he must speak, although time pressed.
“Mrs. Cresswell,” he began hurriedly, “there’s a matter—a personal matter of which I have wanted to speak—a long time—I—” The dinnerbell rang, and he stopped, vexed.
“Come up to the house this afternoon,” she said; “Colonel Cresswell will be away—” Then she paused abruptly. A strange startling thought flashed through her brain. Alwyn noticed nothing. He thanked her cordially and hurried toward the dining-hall, meeting Colonel Cresswell on horseback just as he turned into the school gate.
Mary Cresswell walked slowly on, flushing and paling by turns. Could it be that this Negro had dared to misunderstand her—had presumed? She reviewed her conduct. Perhaps she had been indiscreet in thus making a confidant of him in her trouble. She had thought of him as a boy—an old student, a sort of confidential servant; but what had he thought? She remembered Miss Smith’s warning of years before—and he had been North since and acquired Northern notions of freedom and equality. She bit her lip cruelly.
Yet, she mused, she was herself to blame. She had unwittingly made the intimacy and he was but a Negro, looking on every white woman as a goddess and ready to fawn at the slightest encouragement. There had been no one else here to confide in. She could not tell Miss Smith her troubles, although she knew Miss Smith must suspect. Harry Cresswell, apparently, had written nothing home of their quarrel. All the neighbors behaved as if her excuse of ill-health were sufficient to account for her return South to escape the rigors of a Northern winter. Alwyn, and Alwyn alone, really knew. Well, it was her blindness, and she must right it quietly and quickly with hard ruthless plainness. She blushed again at the shame of it; then she began to excuse.
After all, which was worse—a Cresswell or an Alwyn? It was no sin that Alwyn had done; it was simply ignorant presumption, and she must correct him firmly, but gently, like a child. What a crazy muddle the world was! She thought of Harry Cresswell and the tale he told her in the swamp. She thought of the flitting ghosts that awful night in Washington. She thought of Miss Wynn who had jilted Alwyn and given her herself a very bad quarter of an hour. What a world it was, and after all how far was this black boy wrong? Just then Colonel Cresswell rode up behind and greeted her.
She started almost guiltily, and again a sense of the awkwardness of her position reddened her face and neck. The Colonel dismounted, despite her protest, and walked beside her. They chatted along indifferently, of the crops, her brother’s new baby, the proposed mill.
“Mary,” his voice abruptly struck a new note. “I don’t like the way you talk with that Alwyn nigger.”
She was silent.
“Of course,” he continued, “you’re Northern born and you have been a teacher in this school and feel differently from us in some ways; but mark what I say, a nigger will presume on the slightest pretext, and you must keep them in their place. Then, too, you are a Cresswell now—”
She smiled bitterly; he noticed it, but went on:
“You are a Cresswell, even if you have caught Harry up to some of his deviltry,”—she started,—“and got miffed about it. It’ll all come out right. You’re a Cresswell, and you must hold yourself too high to ‘Mister’ a nigger or let him dream of any sort of equality.”
He spoke pleasantly, but with a certain sharp insistence that struck a note of fear in Mary’s heart. For a moment she thought of writing Alwyn not to call. But, no; a note would be unwise. She and Colonel Cresswell lunched rather silently.
“Well, I must get to town,” he finally announced. “The mill directors meet today. If Maxwell calls by about that lumber tell him I’ll see him in town.” And away he went.
He had scarcely reached the highway and ridden a quarter of a mile or so when he spied Bles Alwyn hurrying across the field toward the Cresswell Oaks. He frowned and rode on. Then reining in his horse, he stopped in the shadow of the trees and watched Alwyn.
It was here that Zora saw him as she came up from her house. She, too, stopped, and soon saw whom he was watching. She had been planning to see Mr. Cresswell about the cut timber on her land. By legal right it was hers but she knew he would claim half, treating her like a mere tenant. Seeing him watching Alwyn she paused in the shadow and waited, fearing trouble. She, too, had felt that the continued conversations of Alwyn and Mrs. Cresswell were indiscreet, but she hoped that they had attracted no one else’s attention. Now she feared the Colonel was suspicious and her heart sank. Alwyn went straight toward the house and disappeared in the oak avenue. Still Colonel Cresswell waited but Zora waited no longer. Alwyn must be warned. She must reach Cresswell’s mansion before Cresswell did and without him seeing her. This meant a long detour of the swamp to approach the Oaks from the west. She silently gathered up her skirts and walked quickly and carefully away.
She was a strong woman, lithe and vigorous, living in the open air and used to walking. Once out of hearing she threw away her hat and bending forward ran through the swamp. For a while she ran easily and swiftly. Then for a moment she grew dizzy and it seemed as though she was standing still and the swamp in solemn grandeur marching past—in solemn mocking grandeur. She loosened her dress at the neck and flew on.
She sped at last through the oaks, up the terraces, and slowing down to an unsteady walk, staggered into the house. No one would wonder at her being there. She came up now and then and sorted the linen and piled the ba
skets for her girls. She entered a side door and listened. The Colonel’s voice sounded impatiently in the front hall.
“Mary! Mary?”
A pause, then an answer:
“Yes, father!”
He started up the front stairway and Zora hurried up the narrow back stairs, almost overturning a servant.
“I’m after the clothes,” she explained. She reached the back landing just in time to see Colonel Cresswell’s head rising up the front staircase. With a quick bound she almost fell into the first room at the top of the stairs.
Bles Alwyn had hurried through his dinner duties and hastened to the Oaks. The questions, the doubts, the uncertainty within him were clamoring for utterance. How much had Mrs. Cresswell ever known of Zora? What kind of a woman was Zora now? Mrs. Cresswell had seen her and had talked to her and watched her. What did she think? Thus he formulated his questions as he went, half timid, and fearful in putting them and yet determined to know.
Mrs. Cresswell, waiting for him, was almost panic-stricken. Probably he would beat round the bush seeking further encouragement; but at the slightest indication she must crush him ruthlessly and at the same time point the path of duty. He ought to marry some good girl—not Zora, but some one. Somehow Zora seemed too unusual and strange for him—too inhuman, as Mary Cresswell judged humanity. She glanced out from her seat on the upper verandah over the front porch and saw Alwyn coming. Where should she receive him? On the porch and have Mr. Maxwell ride up? In the parlor and have the servants astounded and talking? If she took him up to her own sitting-room the servants would think he was doing some work or fetching something for the school. She greeted him briefly and asked him in.
“Good-afternoon, Bles”—using his first name to show him his place, and then inwardly recoiling at its note of familiarity. She preceded him up-stairs to the sitting-room, where, leaving the door ajar, she seated herself on the opposite side of the room and waited.
He fidgeted, then spoke rapidly.
“Mrs. Cresswell—this is a personal affair.” She reddened angrily. “A love affair”—she paled with something like fear—“and I”—she started to speak, but could not—“I want to know what you think about Zora?”
“About Zora!” she gasped weakly. The sudden reaction, the revulsion of her agitated feelings, left her breathless.
“About Zora. You know I loved her dearly as a boy—how dearly I have only just begun to realize: I’ve been wondering if I understood—if I wasn’t—”
Mrs. Cresswell got angrily to her feet.
“You have come here to speak to me of that—that—” she choked, and Bles thought his worst fears realized.
“Mary, Mary!” Colonel Cresswell’s voice broke suddenly in upon them. With a start of fear Mrs. Cresswell rushed out into the hall and closed the door.
“Mary, has that Alwyn nigger been here this afternoon?” Mr. Cresswell was coming up-stairs, carrying his riding whip.
“Why, no!” she answered, lying instinctively before she quite realized what her lie meant. She hesitated. “That is, I haven’t seen him. I must have nodded over my book,”—looking toward the little verandah at the front of the upper hall, where her easy chair stood with her book. Then with an awful flash of enlightenment she realized what her lie might mean, and her heart paused.
Cresswell strode up.
“I saw him come up—he must have entered. He’s nowhere downstairs,” he wavered and scowled. “Have you been in your sitting-room?” And then, not waiting for a reply, he strode to the door.
“But the damned scoundrel wouldn’t dare!”
He deliberately placed his hand in his right-hand hip-pocket and threw open the door.
Mary Cresswell stood frozen. The full horror of the thing burst upon her. Her own silly misapprehension, the infatuation of Alwyn for Zora, her thoughtless—no, vindictive—betrayal of him to something worse than death. She listened for the crack of doom. She heard a bird singing far down in the swamp; she heard the soft raising of a window and the closing of a door. And then—great God in heaven! must she live forever in this agony?—and then, she heard the door bang and Mr. Cresswell’s gruff voice—
“Well, where is he?—he isn’t in there!”
Mary Cresswell felt that something was giving way within. She swayed and would have crashed to the bottom of the staircase if just then she had not seen at the opposite end of the hall, near the back stairs, Zora and Alwyn emerge calmly from a room, carrying a basket full of clothes. Colonel Cresswell stared at them, and Zora instinctively put up her hand and fastened her dress at the throat. The Colonel scowled, for it was all clear to him now.
“Look here,” he angrily opened upon them, “if you niggers want to meet around keep out of this house; hereafter I’ll send the clothes down. By God, if you want to make love go to the swamp!” He stamped down the stairs while an ashy paleness stole beneath the dark-red bronze of Zora’s face.
They walked silently down the road together—the old familiar road. Alwyn was staring moodily ahead.
“We must get married—before Christmas, Zora,” he presently avowed, not looking at her. He felt the basket pause and he glanced up. Her dark eyes were full upon him and he saw something in their depths that brought him to himself and made him realize his blunder.
“Zora!” he stammered, “forgive me! Will you marry me?”
She looked at him calmly with infinite compassion. But her reply was uttered unhesitantly; distinct, direct.
“No, Bles.”
Thirty-five
THE COTTON MILL
The people of Toomsville started in their beds and listened. A new song was rising on the air: a harsh, low, murmuring croon that shook the village ranged around its old square of dilapadated stores. It was not a song of joy; it was not a song of sorrow; it was not a song at all, perhaps, but a confused whizzing and murmuring, as of a thousand ill-tuned, busy voices. Some of the listeners wondered; but most of the town cried joyfully, “It’s the new cotton-mill!”
John Taylor’s head teemed with new schemes. The mill trust of the North was at last a fact. The small mills had not been able to buy cotton when it was low because Cresswell was cornering it in the name of the Farmers’ League; now that it was high they could not afford to, and many surrendered to the trust.
“Next thing,” wrote Taylor to Easterly, “is to reduce cost of production. Too much goes in wages. Gradually transfer mills South.”
Easterly argued that the labor was too unskilled in the South and that to send Northern spinners down would spread labor troubles. Taylor replied briefly: “Never fear; we’ll scare them with a vision of niggers in the mills!”
Colonel Cresswell was not so easily won over to the new scheme. In the first place he was angry because the school, which he had come to regard as on its last legs, somehow still continued to flourish. The ten-thousand-dollar mortgage had but three more years, and that would end all; but he had hoped for a crash even earlier. Instead of this, Miss Smith was cheerfully expanding the work, hiring new teachers, and especially she had brought to help her two young Negroes whom he suspected. Colonel Cresswell had prevented the Tolliver land sale, only to be inveigled himself into Zora’s scheme which now began to worry him. He must evict Zora’s tenants as soon as the crops were planted and harvested. There was nothing unjust about such a course, he argued, for Negroes anyway were too lazy and shiftless to buy the land. They would not, they could not, work without driving. All this he imparted to John Taylor, to which that gentleman listened carefully.
“H’m, I see,” he owned. “And I know the way out.”
“How?”
“A cotton mill in Toomsville.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Bring in whites.”
“But I don’t want poor white trash; I’d sooner have niggers.”
“Now, see here,” argued Taylor, “you can’t have everything you want—day’s gone by for aristocracy of old kind. You must have neighbors: cho
ose, then, white or black. I say white.”
“But they’ll rule us—out-vote us—marry our daughters,” warmly objected the Colonel.
“Some of them may—most of them won’t. A few of them with brains will help us rule the rest with money. We’ll plant cotton mills beside the cotton fields, use whites to keep niggers in their place, and the fear of niggers to keep the poorer whites in theirs.”
The Colonel looked thoughtful.
“There’s something in that,” he confessed after a while; “but it’s a mighty big experiment, and it may go awry.”
“Not with brains and money to guide it. And at any rate, we’ve got to try it; it’s the next logical step, and we must take it.”
“But in the meantime, I’m not going to give up good old methods; I’m going to set the sheriff behind these lazy niggers,” said the Colonel; “and I’m going to stop that school putting notions into their heads.”
In three short months the mill at Toomsville was open and its wheels whizzing to the boundless pride of the citizens.
“Our enterprise, sir!” they said to the strangers on the strength of the five thousand dollars locally invested.
Once it had vigor to sing, the song of the mill knew no resting; morning and evening, day and night it crooned its rhythmic tune; only during the daylight Sundays did its murmur die to a sibilant hiss. All the week its doors were filled with the coming and going of men and women and children: many men, more women, and greater and greater throngs of children. It seemed to devour children, sitting with its myriad eyes gleaming and its black maw open, drawing in the pale white mites, sucking their blood and spewing them out paler and ever paler. The face of the town began to change, showing a ragged tuberculous looking side with dingy homes in short and homely rows.
There came gradually a new consciousness to the town. Hitherto town and country had been ruled by a few great landlords but at the very first election, Colton, an unknown outsider, had beaten the regular candidate for sheriff by such a majority that the big property owners dared not count him out. They had, however, an earnest consultation with John Taylor.
The Quest of the Silver Fleece Page 32