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.”
“Well, my dear, I wouldn’t do it again.”
The girl was angry.
“I’m not a school-girl, but a grown woman, and capable of caring for myself. Moreover, in matter of propriety I do not think you have usually found my ideas too lax—rather the opposite.”
“There, there, dear; don’t be angry. Only I think if your brother knew—”
“He will know in a very few weeks; he is coming to visit the Cresswells.” And Miss Taylor sailed triumphantly up the stairs.
But John Taylor was not the man to wait weeks when a purpose could be accomplished in days or hours. No sooner was Harry Cresswell’s telegram at hand than he hastened back from Savannah, struck across country, and the week after his sister’s ride found him striding up the carriage-way of the Cresswell home.
John Taylor had prospered since summer. The cotton manufacturers’ combine was all but a fact; Mr. Easterly had discovered that his chief clerk’s sense and executive ability were invaluable, and John Taylor was slated for a salary in five figures when things should be finally settled, not to mention a generous slice of stock—watery at present, but warranted to ripen early.
While Mr. Easterly still regarded Taylor’s larger trust as chimerical, some occurrences of the fall made him take a respectful attitude toward it. Just as the final clauses of the combine agreement were to be signed, there appeared a shortage in the cotton-crop, and prices began to soar. The cause was obviously the unexpected success of the new Farmers’ League among the cotton-growers. Mr. Easterly found it comparatively easy to overthrow the corner, but the flurry made some of the manufacturers timid, and the trust agreement was postponed until a year later. This experience and the persistence of Mr. Taylor induced Mr. Easterly to take a step toward the larger project: he let in some eager outside capital to the safer manufacturing scheme, and withdrew a corresponding amount of Mrs. Grey’s money. This he put into John Taylor’s hands to invest in the South in bank stock and industries with the idea of playing a part in the financial situation there.
“It’s a risk, Taylor, of course, and we’ll let the old lady take the risk. At the worst it’s safer than the damned foolishness she has in mind.”
So it happened that John Taylor went South to look after large investments and, as Mr. Easterly expressed it, “to bring back facts, not dreams.” His investment matters went quickly and well, and now he turned to his wider and bigger scheme. He wrote the Cresswells tentatively, expecting no reply, or an evasive one; planning to circle around them, drawing his nets closer, and trying them again later. To his surprise they responded quickly.
“Humph! Hard pressed,” he decided, and hurried to them.
So it was the week after Mary Taylor’s ride that found him at Cresswell’s front door, thin, eagle-eyed, fairly well dressed and radiating confidence.
“John Taylor,” he announced to Sam, jerkily, thrusting out a card. “Want to see Mr. Cresswell; soon as possible.”
Sam made him wait a half-hour, for the sake of discipline, and then brought father and son.
“Good-morning, Mr. Cresswell, and Mr. Cresswell again,” said Mr. Taylor, helping himself to a straight-backed chair. “Hope you’ll pardon this unexpected visit. Found myself called through Montgomery, just after I got your wire; thought I’d better drop over.”
At Harry’s suggestion they moved to the verandah and sat down over whiskey and soda, which Taylor refused, and plunged into the subject without preliminaries.
“I’m assuming that you gentlemen are in the cotton business for making money. So am I. I see a way in which you and your friends can help me and mine, and clear up more millions than all of us can spend; for this reason I’ve hunted you up. This is my scheme.
“See here; there are a thousand cotton-mills in this country, half of them in the South, one-fourth in New England, and one-fourth in the Middle States. They are capitalized at six hundred million dollars. Now let me tell you: we control three hundred and fifty millions of that capitalization. The trust is going through capitalization at a billion. The only thing that threatens it is child-labor legislation in the South, the tariff, and the control of the supply of cotton. Pretty big hindrances, you say. That’s so, but look here: we’ve got the stock so placed that nothing short of a popular upheaval can send any Child Labor bill through Congress in six years. See? After that we don’t care. Same thing applies to the tariff. The last bill ran ten years. The present bill will last longer, or I lose my
guess—’specially if Smith is in the Senate.
“Well, then, there remains raw cotton. The connection of cotton-raising and its raw material is too close to risk a manufacturing trust that does not include practical control of the raw material. For that reason we’re planning a trust to include the raising and manufacturing of cotton in America. Then, too, cornering the cotton market here means the whip-hand of the industrial world. Gentlemen, it’s the biggest idea of the century. It beats steel.”
Colonel Cresswell chuckled.
“How do you spell that?” he asked.
But John Taylor was not to be diverted; his thin face was pale, but his gray eyes burned with the fire of a zealot. Harry Cresswell only smiled dimly and looked interested.
“Now, again,” continued John Taylor. “There are a million cotton farms in the South, half run by colored people and half by whites. Leave the colored out of account as long as they are disfranchised. The half million white farms are owned or controlled by five thousand wholesale merchants and three thousand big landowners, of whom you, Colonel Cresswell, are among the biggest with your fifty thousand acres. Ten banks control these eight thousand people—one of these is the Jefferson National of Montgomery, of which you are a silent director.”
Colonel Cresswell started; this man evidently had inside information. Did he know of the mortgage, too?
“Don’t be alarmed. I’m safe,” Taylor assured him. “Now, then, if we can get the banks, wholesale merchants, and biggest planters into line we can control the cotton crop.”
“But,” objected Harry Cresswell, “while the banks and the large merchants may be possibilities, do you know what it means to try to get planters into line?”
“Yes, I do. And what I don’t know you and your father do. Colonel Cresswell is president of the Farmers’ League. That’s the reason I’m here. Your success last year made you indispensable to our plans.”
“Our success?” laughed Colonel Cresswell, ruefully, thinking of the fifty thousand dollars lost and the mortgage to cover it.
“Yes, sir—success! You didn’t know it; we were too careful to allow that; and I say frankly you wouldn’t know it now if we weren’t convinced you were too far involved and the League too discouraged to repeat the dose.”
The Quest of the Silver Fleece Page 9
