Chapter 6

She had chosen her mule long before--a big, black beast, snorting over his pile of corn,--and gliding up to him, she gathered his supper into her skirt, found a stout halter, and fed him sparingly as he followed her. Quickly she unfastened the pieces of the fence, led the animal through, and spliced them again; and then, with fox-like caution, she guided her prize through the labyrinthine windings of the swamp. It was dark and haunting, and ever and again rose lonely night cries. The girl trembled a little, but plodded resolutely on until the dim silver disk of the half-moon began to glimmer through the trees. Then she pressed on more swiftly, and fed more scantily, until finally, with the moonlight pouring over them at the black lagoon, Zora attempted to drive the animal into the still waters; but he gave a loud protesting snort and balked. By subtle temptings she gave him to understand that plenty lay beyond the dark waters, and quickly swinging herself to his back she started to ride him up and down along the edge of the lagoon, petting and whispering to him of good things beyond. Slowly her eyes grew wide; she seemed to be riding out of dreamland on some hobgoblin beast.

Deeper and deeper they penetrated into the dark waters. Now they entered the slime; now they stumbled on hidden roots; but deeper and deeper they waded until at last, turning the animal's head with a jerk, and giving him a sharp stroke of the whip, she headed straight for the island. A moment the beast snorted and plunged; higher and higher the black still waters rose round the girl. They crept up her little limbs, swirled round her breasts and gleamed green and slimy along her shoulders. A wild terror gripped her. Maybe she was riding the devil's horse, and these were the yawning gates of hell, black and sombre beneath the cold, dead radiance of the moon. She saw again the gnarled and black and claw-like fingers of Elspeth gripping and dragging her down.

A scream struggled in her breast, her fingers relaxed, and the big beast, stretching his cramped neck, rose in one mighty plunge and planted his feet on the sand of the island.

* * * * *

Bles, hurrying down in the morning with new tools and new determination, stopped and stared in blank amazement. Zora was perched in a tree singing softly and beneath a fat black mule was finishing his breakfast.

"Zora--" he gasped, "how--how did you do it?"

She only smiled and sang a happier measure, pausing only to whisper:

"Dreams--dreams--it's all dreams here, I tells you."

Bles frowned and stood irresolute. The song proceeded with less assurance, slower and lower, till it stopped, and the singer dropped to the ground, watching him with wide eyes. He looked down at her, slight, tired, scratched, but undaunted, striving blindly toward the light with stanch, unfaltering faith. A pity surged in his heart. He put his arm about her shoulders and murmured:

"You poor, brave child."

And she shivered with joy.

All day Saturday and part of Sunday they worked feverishly. The trees crashed and the stumps groaned and crept up into the air, the brambles blazed and smoked; little frightened animals fled for shelter; and a wide black patch of rich loam broadened and broadened till it kissed, on every side but the sheltered east, the black waters of the lagoon. Late Sunday night the mule again swam the slimy lagoon, and disappeared toward the Cresswell fields. Then Bles sat down beside Zora, facing the fields, and gravely took her hand. She looked at him in quick, breathless fear.

"Zora," he said, "sometimes you tell lies, don't you?"

"Yes," she said slowly; "sometimes."

"And, Zora, sometimes you steal--you stole the pin from Miss Taylor, and we stole Mr. Cresswell's mule for two days."

"Yes," she said faintly, with a perplexed wrinkle in her brows, "I stole it."

"Well, Zora, I don't want you ever to tell another lie, or ever to take anything that doesn't belong to you."

She looked at him silently with the shadow of something like terror far back in the depths of her deep eyes.

"Always--tell--the truth?" she repeated slowly.

"Yes."

Her fingers worked nervously.

"All the truth?" she asked.

He thought a while.

"No," said he finally, "it is not necessary always to tell all the truth; but never tell anything that isn't the truth."

"Never?"

"Never."

"Even if it hurts me?"

"Even if it hurts. God is good, He will not let it hurt much."

"He's a fair God, ain't He?" she mused, scanning the evening sky.

"Yes--He's fair, He wouldn't take advantage of a little girl that did wrong, when she didn't know it was wrong."

Her face lightened and she held his hands in both hers, and said solemnly as though saying a prayer:

"I won't lie any more, and I won't steal--and--" she looked at him in startled wistfulness--he remembered it in after years; but he felt he had preached enough.

"And now for the seed!" he interrupted joyously. "And then--the Silver Fleece!"

That night, for the first time, Bles entered Zora's home. It was a single low, black room, smoke-shadowed and dirty, with two dingy beds and a gaping fire-place. On one side of the fire-place sat the yellow woman, young, with traces of beauty, holding the white child in her arms; on the other, hugging the blaze, huddled a formless heap, wreathed in coils of tobacco smoke--Elspeth, Zora's mother.

Zora said nothing, but glided in and stood in the shadows.

"Good-evening," said Bles cheerily. The woman with the baby alone responded.

"I came for the seed you promised us--the cotton-seed."

The hag wheeled and approached him swiftly, grasping his shoulders and twisting her face into his. She was a horrible thing--filthy of breath, dirty, with dribbling mouth and red eyes. Her few long black teeth hung loosely like tusks and the folds of fat on her chin curled down on her great neck. Bles shuddered and stepped back.

"Is you afeared, honey?" she whispered.

"No," he said sturdily.

She chuckled drily. "Yes, you is--everybody's 'feared of old Elspeth; but she won't hurt you--you's got the spell;" and wheeling again, she was back at the fire.

"But the seed?" he ventured.

She pointed impressively roofward. "The dark of the moon, boy, the dark of the moon--the first dark--at midnight." Bles could not wring another word from her; nor did the ancient witch, by word or look, again give the slightest indication that she was aware of his presence.

With reluctant farewell, Bles turned home. For a space Zora watched him, and once she started after him, but came slowly back, and sat by the fire-place.

Out of the night came voices and laughter, and the sound of wheels and galloping horses. It was not the soft, rollicking laughter of black men, but the keener, more metallic sound of white men's cries, and Bles Alwyn paused at the edge of the wood, looked back and hesitated, but decided after a moment to go home and to bed.

Zora, however, leapt to her feet and fled into the night, while the hag screamed after her and cursed. There was tramping of feet on the cabin floor, and loud voices and singing and cursing.

"Where's Zora?" some one yelled, with an oath. "Damn it! where is she? I haven't seen her for a year, you old devil."

The hag whimpered and snarled. Far down in the field of the Fleece, Zora lay curled beneath a tall dark tree asleep. All night there was coming and going in the cabin; the talk and laughter grew loud and boisterous, and the red fire glared in the night.

* * * * *

The days flew by and the moon darkened. In the swamp, the hidden island lay spaded and bedded, and Bles was throwing up a dyke around the edge; Zora helped him until he came to the black oak at the western edge. It was a large twisted thing with one low flying limb that curled out across another tree and made a mighty seat above the waters.

"Don't throw the dirt too high there," she begged; "it'll bring my seat too near the earth."

He looked up.

"Why, it's a throne," he laughed.

"It needs a roof," he whimsically told her when his day's work was done. Deftly twisting and intertwining the branches of tree and bush, he wove a canopy of living green that shadowed the curious nest and warded it snugly from wind and water.

Early next morning Bles slipped down and improved the nest; adding foot-rests to make the climbing easy, peep-holes east and west, a bit of carpet over the bark, and on the rough main trunk, a little picture in blue and gold of Bougereau's Madonna. Zora sat hidden and alone in silent ecstasy. Bles peeped in--there was not room to enter: the girl was staring silently at the Madonna. She seemed to feel rather than hear his presence, and she inquired softly:

"Who's it, Bles?"

"The mother of God," he answered reverently.

"And why does she hold a lily?"

"It stands for purity--she was a good woman."

"With a baby," Zora added slowly.

"Yes--" said Bles, and then more quickly--"It is the Christ Child--God's baby."

"God is the father of all the little babies, ain't He, Bles?"

"Why, yes--yes, of course; only this little baby didn't have any other father."

"Yes, I know one like that," she said,--and then she added softly: "Poor little Christ-baby."

Bles hesitated, and before he found words Zora was saying:

"How white she is; she's as white as the lily, Bles; but--I'm sorry she's white--Bles, what's purity--just whiteness?"

Bles glanced at her awkwardly but she was still staring wide-eyed at the picture, and her voice was earnest. She was now so old and again so much a child, an eager questioning child, that there seemed about her innocence something holy.

"It means," he stammered, groping for meanings--"it means being good--just as good as a woman knows how."

She wheeled quickly toward him and asked him eagerly:

"Not better--not better than she knows, but just as good, in--lying and stealing and--and everything?"

Bles smiled.

"No--not better than she knows, but just as good."

She trembled happily.

"I'm--pure," she said, with a strange little breaking voice and gesture. A sob struggled in his throat.

"Of course you are," he whispered tenderly, hiding her little hands in his.

"I--I was so afraid--sometimes--that I wasn't," she whispered, lifting up to him her eyes streaming with tears. Silently he kissed her lips.

From that day on they walked together in a new world. No revealing word was spoken; no vows were given, none asked for; but a new bond held them. She grew older, quieter, taller, he humbler, more tender and reverent, as they toiled together.

So the days passed. The sun burned in the heavens; but the silvered glory of the moon grew fainter and fainter and each night it rose later than the night before. Then one day Zora whispered:

"Tonight!"

Bles came to the cabin, and he and Zora and Elspeth sat silently around the fire-place with its meagre embers. The night was balmy and still; only occasionally a wandering breeze searching the hidden places of the swamp, or the call and song of night birds, jarred the stillness. Long they sat, until the silence crept into Bles's flesh, and stretching out his hand, he touched Zora's, clasping it.

After a time the old woman rose and hobbled to a big black chest. Out of it she brought an old bag of cotton seed--not the white-green seed which Bles had always known, but small, smooth black seeds, which she handled carefully, dipping her hands deep down and letting them drop through her gnarled fingers. And so again they sat and waited and waited, saying no word.

Not until the stars of midnight had swung to the zenith did they start down through the swamp. Bles sought to guide the old woman, but he found she knew the way better than he did. Her shadowy figure darting in and out among the trunks till they crossed the tree bridge, moved ever noiselessly ahead.

She motioned the boy and girl away to the thicket at the edge, and stood still and black in the midst of the cleared island. Bles slipped his arm protectingly around Zora, glancing fearfully about in the darkness. Slowly a great cry rose and swept the island. It struck madly and sharply, and then died away to uneasy murmuring. From afar there seemed to come the echo or the answer to the call. The form of Elspeth blurred the night dimly far off, almost disappearing, and then growing blacker and larger. They heard the whispering "_swish-swish_" of falling seed; they felt the heavy tread of a great coming body. The form of the old woman suddenly loomed black above them, hovering a moment formless and vast then fading again away, and the "_swish-swish_" of the falling seed alone rose in the silence of the night.

At last all was still. A long silence. Then again the air seemed suddenly filled with that great and awful cry; its echoing answer screamed afar and they heard the raucous voice of Elspeth beating in their ears:

_"De seed done sowed! De seed done sowed!"_

_Ten_

MR. TAYLOR CALLS

"Thinking the matter over," said Harry Cresswell to his father, "I'm inclined to advise drawing this Taylor out a little further."

The Colonel puffed his cigar and one eye twinkled, the lid of the other being at the moment suggestively lowered.

"Was she pretty?" he asked; but his son ignored the remark, and the father continued:

"I had a telegram from Taylor this morning, after you left. He'll be passing through Montgomery the first of next month, and proposes calling."

"I'll wire him to come," said Harry, promptly.

At this juncture the door opened and a young lady entered. Helen Cresswell was twenty, small and pretty, with a slightly languid air. Outside herself there was little in which she took very great interest, and her interest in herself was not absorbing. Yet she had a curiously sweet way. Her servants liked her and the tenants could count on her spasmodic attentions in time of sickness and trouble.

"Good-morning," she said, with a soft drawl. She sauntered over to her father, kissed him, and hung over the back of his chair.

"Did you get that novel for me, Harry?"--expectantly regarding her brother.

"I forgot it, Sis. But I'll be going to town again soon."

The young lady showed that she was annoyed.

"By the bye, Sis, there's a young lady over at the Negro school whom I think you'd like."

"Black or white?"

"A young lady, I said. Don't be sarcastic."

"I heard you. I did not know whether you were using our language or others'."

"She's really unusual, and seems to understand things. She's planning to call some day--shall you be at home?"

"Certainly not, Harry; you're crazy." And she strolled out to the porch, exchanged some remarks with a passing servant, and then nestled comfortably into a hammock. She helped herself to a chocolate and called out musically:

"Pa, are you going to town today?"

"Yes, honey."

"Can I go?"

"I'm going in an hour or so, and business at the bank will keep me until after lunch."

"I don't care, I just must go. I'm clean out of anything to read. And I want to shop and call on Dolly's friend--she's going soon."

"All right. Can you be ready by eleven?"

She considered.

"Yes--I reckon," she drawled, prettily swinging her foot and watching the tree-tops above the distant swamp.

Harry Cresswell, left alone, rang the bell for the butler.

"Still thinking of going, are you, Sam?" asked Cresswell, carelessly, when the servant appeared. He was a young, light-brown boy, his manner obsequious.

"Why, yes, sir--if you can spare me."

"Spare you, you black rascal! You're going anyhow. Well, you'll repent it; the North is no place for niggers. See here, I want lunch for two at one o'clock." The directions that followed were explicit and given with a particularity that made Sam wonder. "Order my trap," he finally directed.

Cresswell went out on the high-pillared porch until the trap appeared.

"Oh, Harry! I wanted to go in the trap--take me?" coaxed his sister.

"Sorry, Sis, but I'm going the other way."

"I don't believe it," said Miss Cresswell, easily, as she settled down to another chocolate. Cresswell did not take the trouble to reply.

Miss Taylor was on her morning walk when she saw him spinning down the road, and both expressed surprise and pleasure at the meeting.

"What a delightful morning!" said the school-teacher, and the glow on her face said even more.

"I'm driving round through the old plantation," he explained; "won't you join me?"

"The invitation is tempting," she hesitated; "but I've got just oodles of work."

"What! on Saturday?"

"Saturday is my really busy day, don't you know. I guess I could get off; really, though, I suspect I ought to tell Miss Smith."

He looked a little perplexed; but the direction in which her inclinations lay was quite clear to him.

"It--it would be decidedly the proper thing," he murmured, "and we could, of course, invite Miss--"

She saw the difficulty and interrupted him:

"It's quite unnecessary; she'll think I have simply gone for a long walk." And soon they were speeding down the silent road, breathing the perfume of the pines.

Now a ride of an early spring morning, in Alabama, over a leisurely old plantation road and behind a spirited horse, is an event to be enjoyed. Add to this a man bred to be agreeable and outdoing his training, and a pretty girl gay with new-found companionship--all this is apt to make a morning worth remembering.

They turned off the highway and passed through long stretches of ploughed and tumbled fields, and other fields brown with the dead ghosts of past years' cotton standing straggling and weather-worn. Long, straight, or curling rows of ploughers passed by with steaming, struggling mules, with whips snapping and the yodle of workers or the sharp guttural growl of overseers as a constant accompaniment.

"They're beginning to plough up the land for the cotton-crop," he explained.

"What a wonderful crop it is!" Mary had fallen pensive.

"Yes, indeed--if only we could get decent returns for it."

"Why, I thought it was a most valuable crop." She turned to him inquiringly.

"It is--to Negroes and manufacturers, but not to planters."

"But why don't the planters do something?"

"What can be done with Negroes?" His tone was bitter. "We tried to combine against manufacturers in the Farmers' League of last winter. My father was president. The pastime cost him fifty thousand dollars."

Miss Taylor was perplexed, but eager. "You must correspond with my brother, Mr. Cresswell," she gravely observed. "I'm sure he--" Before she could finish, an overseer rode up. He began talking abruptly, with a quick side-glance at Mary, in which she might have caught a gleam of surprised curiosity.

"That old nigger, Jim Sykes, over on the lower place, sir, ain't showed up again this morning."

Cresswell nodded. "I'll drive by and see," he said carelessly.

The old man was discovered sitting before his cabin with his head in his hands. He was tall, black, and gaunt, partly bald, with tufted hair. One leg was swathed in rags, and his eyes, as he raised them, wore a cowed and furtive look.

"Well, Uncle Jim, why aren't you at work?" called Cresswell from the roadside. The old man rose painfully to his feet, swayed against the cabin, and clutched off his cap.

"It's my leg again, Master Harry--the leg what I hurt in the gin last fall," he answered, uneasily.

Cresswell frowned. "It's probably whiskey," he assured his companion, in an undertone; then to the man:

"You must get to the field to-morrow,"--his habitually calm, unfeeling positiveness left no ground for objection; "I cannot support you in idleness, you know."

"Yes, Master Harry," the other returned, with conciliatory eagerness; "I knows that--I knows it and I ain't shirking. But, Master Harry, they ain't doing me right 'bout my cabin--I just wants to show you." He got out some dirty papers, and started to hobble forward, wincing with pain. Mary Taylor stirred in her seat under an involuntary impulse to help, but Cresswell touched the horse.

"All right, Uncle Jim," he said; "we'll look it over to-morrow."

They turned presently to where they could see the Cresswell oaks waving lazily in the sunlight and the white gleam of the pillared "Big House."

A pause at the Cresswell store, where Mr. Cresswell entered, afforded Mary Taylor an opportunity further to extend her fund of information.

"Do you go to school?" she inquired of the black boy who held the horse, her mien sympathetic and interested.

"No, ma'am," he mumbled.

"What's your name?"

"Buddy--I'se one of Aunt Rachel's chilluns."

"And where do you live, Buddy?"

"I lives with granny, on de upper place."

"Well, I'll see Aunt Rachel and ask her to send you to school."

"Won't do no good--she done ast, and Mr. Cresswell, he say he ain't going to have no more of his niggers--"

But Mr. Cresswell came out just then, and with him a big, fat, and greasy black man, with little eyes and soft wheedling voice. He was following Cresswell at the side but just a little behind, hat in hand, head aslant, and talking deferentially. Cresswell strode carelessly on, answering him with good-natured tolerance.

The black man stopped with humility before the trap and swept a profound obeisance. Cresswell glanced up quizzically at Miss Taylor.

"This," he announced, "is Jones, the Baptist preacher--begging."

"Ah, lady,"--in mellow, unctuous tones--"I don't know what we poor black folks would do without Mr. Cresswell--the Lord bless him," said the minister, shoving his hand far down into his pocket.

Shortly afterward they were approaching the Cresswell Mansion, when the young man reined in the horse.

"If you wouldn't mind," he suggested, "I could introduce my sister to you."

"I should be delighted," answered Miss Taylor, readily.

When they rolled up to the homestead under its famous oaks the hour was past one. The house was a white oblong building of two stories. In front was the high pillared porch, semi-circular, extending to the roof with a balcony in the second story. On the right was a broad verandah looking toward a wide lawn, with the main road and the red swamp in the distance.

The butler met them, all obeisance.

"Ask Miss Helen to come down," said Mr. Cresswell.

Sam glanced at him.

"Miss Helen will be dreadful sorry, but she and the Colonel have just gone to town--I believe her Aunty ain't well."

Mr. Cresswell looked annoyed.

"Well, well! that's too bad," he said. "But at any rate, have a seat a moment out here on the verandah, Miss Taylor. And, Sam, can't you find us a sandwich and something cool? I could not be so inhospitable as to send you away hungry at this time of day."

Miss Taylor sat down in a comfortable low chair facing the refreshing breeze, and feasted her eyes on the scene. Oh, this was life: a smooth green lawn, and beds of flowers, a vista of brown fields, and the dark line of wood beyond. The deft, quiet butler brought out a little table, spread with the whitest of cloths and laid with the brightest of silver, and "found" a dainty lunch. There was a bit of fried chicken breast, some crisp bacon, browned potatoes, little round beaten biscuit, and rose-colored sherbet with a whiff of wine in it. Miss Taylor wondered a little at the bounty of Southern hospitality; but she was hungry, and she ate heartily, then leaned back dreamily and listened to Mr. Cresswell's smooth Southern _r_'s, adding a word here and there that kept the conversation going and brought a grave smile to his pale lips. At last with a sigh she arose to her feet.

"I must go! What shall I tell Miss Smith! No, no--no carriage; I must walk." Of course, however, she could not refuse to let him go at least half-way, ostensibly to tell her of the coming of her brother. He expressed again his disappointment at his sister's absence.

Somewhat to Miss Taylor's surprise Miss Smith said nothing until they were parting for the night, then she asked:

"Was Miss Cresswell at home?"

Mary reddened.

"She had been called suddenly to town."