Chapter 25

"It's none o' my business, of course. I've been fired and I'm damned glad of it. But see here: if you mutts think you're going to beat these big blokes at their own game of cheating niggers you're daffy. You take this from me: get together with the niggers and hold up this whole capitalist gang. If you don't get the niggers first, they'll use 'em as a club to throw you down. You hear me," and he departed for the train.

Colton was suspicious. The sentiment of joining with the Negroes did not seem to arouse the bitter resentment he expected. There even came whispers to his ears that he had sold out to the landlords, and there was enough truth in the report to scare him. Thus to both parties came the uncomfortable spectre of the black men, and both sides went to work to lay the ghost.

Particularly was Colonel Cresswell stirred to action. He realized that in Bles and Zora he was dealing with a younger class of educated black folk, who were learning to fight with new weapons. They were, he was sure, as dissolute and weak as their parents, but they were shrewder and more aspiring. They must be crushed, and crushed quickly. To this end he had recourse to two sources of help--Johnson and the whites in town.

Johnson was what Colonel Cresswell repeatedly called "a faithful nigger." He was one of those constitutionally timid creatures into whom the servility of his fathers had sunk so deep that it had become second-nature. To him a white man was an archangel, while the Cresswells, his father's masters, stood for God. He served them with dog-like faith, asking no reward, and for what he gave in reverence to them, he took back in contempt for his fellows--"niggers!" He applied the epithet with more contempt than the Colonel himself could express. To the Negroes he was a "white folk's nigger," to be despised and feared.

To him Colonel Cresswell gave a few pregnant directions. Then he rode to town, and told Taylor again of his fears of a labor movement which would include whites and blacks. Taylor could not see any great danger.

"Of course," he conceded, "they'll eventually get together; their interests are identical. I'll admit it's our game to delay this as long possible."

"It must be delayed forever, sir."

"Can't be," was the terse response. "But even if they do ally themselves, our way is easy: separate the leaders, the talented, the pushers, of both races from their masses, and through them rule the rest by money."

But Colonel Cresswell shook his head. "It's precisely these leaders of the Negroes that we mush crush," he insisted. Taylor looked puzzled.

"I thought it was the lazy, shiftless, and criminal Negroes, you feared?"

"Hang it, no! We can deal with them; we've got whips, chain-gangs, and--mobs, if need be--no, it's the Negro who wants to climb up that we've got to beat to his knees."

Taylor could not follow this reasoning. He believed in an aristocracy of talent alone, and secretly despised Colonel Cresswell's pretensions of birth. If a man had ability and push Taylor was willing and anxious to open the way for him, even though he were black. The caste way of thinking in the South, both as applied to poor whites and to Negroes, he simply could not understand. The weak and the ignorant of all races he despised and had no patience with them. "But others--a man's a man, isn't he?" he persisted. But Colonel Cresswell replied:

"No, never, if he's black, and not always when he's white," and he stalked away.

Zora sensed fully the situation. She did not anticipate any immediate understanding with the laboring whites, but she knew that eventually it would be inevitable. Meantime the Negro must strengthen himself and bring to the alliance as much independent economic strength as possible. For the development of her plans she needed Bles Alwyn's constant cooperation. He was business manager of the school and was doing well, but she wanted to point out to him the larger field. So long as she was uncertain of his attitude toward her, it was difficult to act; but now, since the flash of the imminent tragedy at Cresswell Oaks had cleared the air, with all its hurt a frank understanding had been made possible. The very next day Zora chose to show Bles over her new home and grounds, and to speak frankly to him. They looked at the land, examined the proposed farm sites, and viewed the living-room and dormitory in the house.

"You haven't seen my den," said Zora.

"No."

"Miss Smith is in there now; she often hides there. Come."

He went into the large central house and into the living-room, then out on the porch, beyond which lay the kitchen. But to the left, and at the end of the porch, was a small building. It was ceiled in dark yellow pine, with figured denim on the walls. A straight desk of rough hewn wood stood in the corner by the white-curtained window, and a couch and two large easy-chairs faced a tall narrow fireplace of uneven stone. A thick green rag-carpet covered the floor; a few pictures were on the walls--a Madonna, a scene of mad careering horses, and some sad baby faces. The room was a unity; things fitted together as if they belonged together. It was restful and beautiful, from the cheerful pine blaze before which Miss Smith was sitting, to the square-paned window that let in the crimson rays of gathering night. All round the room, stopping only at the fireplace, ran low shelves of the same yellow pine, filled with books and magazines. He scanned curiously Plato's Republic, Gorky's "Comrades," a Cyclopædia of Agriculture, Balzac's novels, Spencer's "First Principles," Tennyson's Poems.

"This is my university," Zora explained, smiling at his interested survey. They went out again and wandered down near the old lagoon.

"Now, Bles," she began, "since we understand each other, can we not work together as good friends?" She spoke simply and frankly, without apparent effort, and talked on at length of her work and vision.

Somehow he could not understand. His mental attitude toward Zora had always been one of guidance, guardianship, and instruction. He had been judging and weighing her from on high, looking down upon her with thoughts of uplift and development. Always he had been holding her dark little hands to lead her out of the swamp of life, and always, when in senseless anger he had half forgotten and deserted her, this vision of elder brotherhood had still remained. Now this attitude was being revolutionized. She was proposing to him a plan of wide scope--a bold regeneration of the land. It was a plan carefully studied out, long thought of and read about. He was asked to be co-worker--nay, in a sense to be a follower, for he was ignorant of much.

He hesitated. Then all at once a sense of his utter unworthiness overwhelmed him. Who was he to stand and judge this unselfish woman? Who was he to falter when she called? A sense of his smallness and narrowness, of his priggish blindness, rose like a mockery in his soul. One thing alone held him back: he was not unwilling to be simply human, a learner and a follower; but would he as such ever command the love and respect of this new and inexplicable woman? Would not comradeship on the basis of the new friendship which she insisted on, be the death of love and thoughts of love?

Thus he hesitated, knowing that his duty lay clear. In her direst need he had deserted her. He had left her to go to destruction and expected that she would. By a superhuman miracle she had risen and seated herself above him. She was working; here was work to be done. He was asked to help; he would help. If it killed his old and new-born dream of love, well and good; it was his punishment.

Yet the sacrifice, the readjustment was hard; he grew to it gradually, inwardly revolting, feeling always a great longing to take this woman and make her nestle in his arms as she used to; catching himself again and again on the point of speaking to her and urging, yet ever again holding himself back and bowing in silent respect to the dignity of her life. Only now and then, when their eyes met suddenly or unthinkingly, a great kindling flash of flame seemed struggling behind showers of tears, until in a moment she smiled or spoke, and then the dropping veil left only the frank open glance, unwavering, soft, kind, but nothing more. Then Alwyn would go wearily away, vexed or disappointed, or merely sad, and both would turn to their work again.

_Thirty-six_

THE LAND

Colonel Cresswell started all the more grimly to overthrow the new work at the school because somewhere down beneath his heart a pity and a wonder were stirring; pity at the perfectly useless struggle to raise the unraisable, a wonder at certain signs of rising. But it was impossible--and unthinkable, even if possible. So he squared his jaw and cheated Zora deliberately in the matter of the cut timber. He placed every obstacle in the way of getting tenants for the school land. Here Johnson, the "faithful nigger," was of incalculable assistance. He was among the first to hear the call for prospective tenants.

The meeting was in the big room of Zora's house, and Aunt Rachel came early with her cheery voice and smile which faded so quickly to lines of sorrow and despair, and then twinkled back again. After her hobbled old Sykes. Fully a half-hour later Rob hurried in.

"Johnson," he informed the others, "has sneaked over to Cresswell's to tell of this meeting. We ought to beat that nigger up." But Zora asked him about the new baby, and he was soon deep in child-lore. Higgins and Sanders came together--dirty, apologetic, and furtive. Then came Johnson.

"How do, Miss Zora--Mr. Alwyn, I sure is glad to see you, sir. Well, if there ain't Aunt Rachel! looking as young as ever. And Higgins, you scamp--Ah, Mr. Sanders--well, gentlemen and ladies, this sure is gwine to be a good cotton season. I remember--" And he ran on endlessly, now to this one, now to that, now to all, his little eyes all the while dancing insinuatingly here and there. About nine o'clock a buggy drove up and Carter and Simpson came in--Carter, a silent, strong-faced, brown laborer, who listened and looked, and Simpson, a worried nervous man, who sat still with difficulty and commenced many sentences but did not finish them. Alwyn looked at his watch and at Zora, but she gave no sign until they heard a rollicking song outside and Tylor burst into the room. He was nearly seven feet high and broad-shouldered, yellow, with curling hair and laughing brown eyes. He was chewing an enormous quid of tobacco, the juice of which he distributed generously, and had had just liquor enough to make him jolly. His entrance was a breeze and a roar.

Alwyn then undertook to explain the land scheme.

"It is the best land in the county--"

"When it's cl'ared," interrupted Johnson, and Simpson looked alarmed.

"It is partially cleared," continued Alwyn, "and our plan is to sell off small twenty-acre farms--"

"You can't do nothing on twenty acres--" began Johnson, but Tylor laid his huge hand right over his mouth and said briefly:

"Shut up!"

Alwyn started again: "We shall sell a few twenty-acre farms but keep one central plantation of one hundred acres for the school. Here Miss Zora will carry on her work and the school will run a model farm with your help. We want to centre here agencies to make life better. We want all sorts of industries; we want a little hospital with a resident physician and two or three nurses; we want a cooperative store for buying supplies; we want a cotton-gin and saw-mill, and in the future other things. This land here, as I have said, is the richest around. We want to keep this hundred acres for the public good, and not sell it. We are going to deed it to a board of trustees, and those trustees are to be chosen from the ones who buy the small farms."

"Who's going to get what's made on this land?" asked Sanders.

"All of us. It is going first to pay for the land, then to support the Home and the School, and then to furnish capital for industries."

Johnson snickered. "You mean youse gwine to git yo' livin' off it?"

"Yes," answered Alwyn; "but I'm going to work for it."

"Who's gwine--" began Simpson, but stopped helplessly.

"Who's going to tend this land?" asked the practical Carter.

"All of us. Each man is going to promise us so many days' work a year, and we're going to ask others to help--the women and girls and school children--they will all help."

"Can you put trust in that sort of help?"

"We can when once the community learns that it pays."

"Does you own the land?" asked Johnson suddenly.

"No; we're buying it, and it's part paid for already."

The discussion became general. Zora moved about among the men whispering and explaining; while Johnson moved, too, objecting and hinting. At last he arose.

"Brethren," he began, "the plan's good enough for talkin' but you can't work it; who ever heer'd tell of such a thing? First place, the land ain't yours; second place, you can't get it worked; third place, white folks won't 'low it. Who ever heer'd of such working land on shares?"

"You do it for white folks each day, why not for yourselves," Alwyn pointed out.

"'Cause we ain't white, and we can't do nothin' like that."

Tylor was asleep and snoring and the others looked doubtfully at each other. It was a proposal a little too daring for them, a bit too far beyond their experience. One consideration alone kept them from shrinking away and that was Zora's influence. Not a man was there whom she had not helped and encouraged nor who had not perfect faith in her; in her impetuous hope, her deep enthusiasm, and her strong will. Even her defects--the hard-held temper, the deeply rooted dislikes--caught their imagination.

Finally, after several other meetings five men took courage--three of the best and two of the weakest. During the Spring long negotiations were entered into by Miss Smith to "buy" the five men. Colonel Cresswell and Mr. Tolliver had them all charged with large sums of indebtedness and these sums had to be assumed by the school. As Colonel Cresswell counted over two thousand dollars of school notes and deposited them beside the mortgage he smiled grimly for he saw the end. Yet, even then his hand trembled and that curious doubt came creeping back. He put it aside angrily and glanced up.

"Nigger wants to talk with you," announced his clerk.

The Colonel sauntered out and found Bles Alwyn waiting.

"Colonel Cresswell," he said, "I have charge of the buying for the school and our tenants this year and I naturally want to do the best possible. I thought I'd come over and see about getting my supplies at your store."

"That's all right; you can get anything you want," said Colonel Cresswell cheerily, for this to his mind was evidence of sense on the part of the Negroes. Bles showed his list of needed supplies--seeds, meat, corn-meal, coffee, sugar, etc. The Colonel glanced over it carelessly, then moved away.

"All right. Come and get what you want--any time," he called back.

"But about the prices," said Alwyn, following him.

"Oh, they'll be all right."

"Of course. But what I want is an estimate of your lowest cash prices."

"Cash?"

"Yes, sir."

Cresswell thought a while; such a business-like proposition from Negroes surprised him.

"Well, I'll let you know," he said.

It was nearly a week later before Alwyn approached him again.

"Now, see here," said Colonel Cresswell, "there's practically no difference between cash and time prices. We buy our stock on time and you can just as well take advantage of this as not. I have figured out about what these things will cost. The best thing for you to do is to make a deposit here and get things when you want them. If you make a good deposit I'll throw off ten per cent, which is all of my profit."

"Thank you," said Alwyn, but he looked over the account and found the whole bill at least twice as large as he expected. Without further parley, he made some excuse and started to town while Mr. Cresswell went to the telephone.

In town Alwyn went to all the chief merchants one after another and received to his great surprise practically the same estimate. He could not understand it. He had estimated the current market prices according to the Montgomery paper, yet the prices in Toomsville were fifty to a hundred and fifty per cent higher. The merchant to whom he went last, laughed.

"Don't you know we're not going to interfere with Colonel Cresswell's tenants?" He stated the dealers' attitude, and Alwyn saw light. He went home and told Zora, and she listened without surprise.

"Now to business," she said briskly. "Miss Smith," turning to the teacher, "as I told you, they're combined against us in town and we must buy in Montgomery. I was sure it was coming, but I wanted to give Colonel Cresswell every chance. Bles starts for Montgomery--"

Alwyn looked up. "Does he?" he asked, smiling.

"Yes," said Zora, smiling in turn. "We must lose no further time."

"But there's no train from Toomsville tonight."

"But there's one from Barton in the morning and Barton is only twenty miles away."

"It is a long walk." Alwyn thought a while, silently. Then he rose. "I'm going," he said. "Good-bye."

In less than a week the storehouse was full, and tenants were at work. The twenty acres of cleared swamp land, attended to by the voluntary labor of all the tenants, was soon bearing a magnificent crop. Colonel Cresswell inspected all the crops daily with a proprietary air that would have been natural had these folk been simply tenants, and as such he persisted in regarding them.

The cotton now growing was perhaps not so uniformly fine as the first acre of Silver Fleece, but it was of unusual height and thickness.

"At least a bale to the acre," Alwyn estimated, and the Colonel mentally determined to take two-thirds of the crop. After that he decided that he would evict Zora immediately; since sufficient land was cleared already for his purposes and moreover, he had seen with consternation a herd of cattle grazing in one field on some early green stuff, and heard a drove of hogs in the swamp. Such an example before the tenants of the Black Belt would be fatal. He must wait a few weeks for them to pick the cotton--then, the end. He was fighting the battle of his color and caste.

The children sang merrily in the brown-white field. The wide baskets, poised aloft, foamed on the erect and swaying bodies of the dark carriers. The crop throughout the land was short that year, for prices had ruled low last season in accordance with the policy of the Combine. This year they started high again. Would they fall? Many thought so and hastened to sell.

Zora and Alwyn gathered their tenants' crops, ginned them at the Cresswells' gin, and carried their cotton to town, where it was deposited in the warehouse of the Farmers' League.

"Now," said Alwyn, "we would best sell while prices are high."

Zora laughed at him frankly.

"We can't," she said. "Don't you know that Colonel Cresswell will attach our cotton for rent as soon as it touches the warehouse?"

"But it's ours."

"Nothing is ours. No black man ordinarily can sell his crop without a white creditor's consent."

Alwyn fumed.

"The best way," he declared, "is to go to Montgomery and get a first-class lawyer and just fight the thing through. The land is legally ours, and he has no right to our cotton."

"Yes, but you must remember that no man like Colonel Cresswell regards a business bargain with a colored man as binding. No white man under ordinary circumstances will help enforce such a bargain against prevailing public opinion."

"But if we cannot trust to the justice of the case, and if you knew we couldn't, why did you try?"

"Because I had to try; and moreover the circumstances are not altogether ordinary: the men in power in Toomsville now are not the landlords of this county; they are poor whites. The Judge and sheriff were both elected by mill-hands who hate Cresswell and Taylor. Then there's a new young lawyer who wants Harry Cresswell's seat in Congress; he don't know much law, I'm afraid; but what he don't know of this case I think I do. I'll get his advice and then--I mean to conduct the case myself," Zora calmly concluded.

"Without a lawyer!" Bles Alwyn stared his amazement.

"Without a lawyer in court."

"Zora! That would be foolish!"

"Is it? Let's think. For over a year now I've been studying the law of the case," and she pointed to her law books; "I know the law and most of the decisions. Moreover, as a black woman fighting a hopeless battle with landlords, I'll gain the one thing lacking."

"What's that?"

"The sympathy of the court and the bystanders."

"Pshaw! From these Southerners?"

"Yes, from them. They are very human, these men, especially the laborers. Their prejudices are cruel enough, but there are joints in their armor. They are used to seeing us either scared or blindly angry, and they understand how to handle us then, but at other times it is hard for them to do anything but meet us in a human way."

"But, Zora, think of the contact of the court, the humiliation, the coarse talk--"

Zora put up her hand and lightly touched his arm. Looking at him, she said:

"Mud doesn't hurt much. This is my duty. Let me do it."

His eyes fell before the shadow of a deeper rebuke. He arose heavily.

"Very well," he acquiesced as he passed slowly out.

The young lawyer started to refuse to touch the case until he saw--or did Zora adroitly make him see?--a chance for eventual political capital. They went over the matter carefully, and the lawyer acquired a respect for the young woman's knowledge.

"First," he said, "get an injunction on the cotton--then go to court." And to insure the matter he slipped over and saw the Judge.

Colonel Cresswell next day stalked angrily into his lawyers' office.

"See here," he thundered, handing the lawyer the notice of the injunction.

"See the Judge," began the lawyer, and then remembered, as he was often forced to do these days, who was Judge.

He inquired carefully into the case and examined the papers. Then he said:

"Colonel Cresswell, who drew this contract of sale?"

"The black girl did."

"Impossible!"

"She certainly did--wrote it in my presence."

"Well, it's mighty well done."

"You mean it will stand in law?"

"It certainly will. There's but one way to break it, and that's to allege misunderstanding on your part."

Cresswell winced. It was not pleasant to go into open court and acknowledge himself over-reached by a Negro; but several thousand dollars in cotton and land were at stake.

"Go ahead," he concurred.

"You can depend on Taylor, of course?" added the lawyer.

"Of course," answered Cresswell. "But why prolong the thing?"

"You see, she's got your cotton tied by injunction."

"I don't see how she did it."

"Easy enough: this Judge is the poor white you opposed in the last primary."

Within a week the case was called, and they filed into the courtroom. Cresswell's lawyer saw only this black woman--no other lawyer or sign of one appeared to represent her. The place soon filled with a lazy, tobacco-chewing throng of white men. A few blacks whispered in one corner. The dirty stove was glowing with pine-wood and the Judge sat at a desk.

"Where's your lawyer?" he asked sharply of Zora.

"I have none," returned Zora, rising.

There came a silence in the court. Her voice was low, and the men leaned forward to listen. The Judge felt impelled to be over-gruff.

"Get a lawyer," he ordered.

"Your honor, my case is simple, and with your honor's permission I wish to conduct it myself. I cannot afford a lawyer, and I do not think I need one."

Cresswell's lawyer smiled and leaned back. It was going to be easier than he supposed. Evidently the woman believed she had no case, and was weakening.

The trial proceeded, and Zora stated her contention. She told how long her mother and grandmother had served the Cresswells and showed her receipt for rent paid.