The Quest of the Silver Fleece

by W. E. B. Dubois

  Colonel Cresswell stood by the door, his hat on, his hands in his pockets.

  “Well, Zora, what have you there?” he asked.

  “Cotton, sir.”

  Harry Cresswell bent over it.

  “Great heavens! Look at this cotton!” he ejaculated. His father approached. The cotton lay in silken handfuls, clean and shimmering, with threads full two inches long. The idlers, black and white, clustered round, gazing at it, and fingering it with repeated exclamations of astonishment.

  “Where did this come from?” asked the Colonel sharply. He and Harry were both eying the girl intently.

  “I raised it in the swamp,” Zora replied quietly, in a dead voice. There was no pride of achievement in her manner, no gladness; all that had flown.

  “Is that all?”

  “No, sir; I think there’s two bales.”

  “Two bales! Where is it? How the devil—” The Colonel was forgetting his guests, but Harry intervened.

  “You’ll need to get it picked right off,” he suggested.

  “It’s all picked, sir.”

  “But where is it?”

  “If you’ll send a wagon, sir—”

  But the Colonel hardly waited.

  “Here you, Jim, take the big mules and drive like—Where’s that wench?”

  But Zora was already striding on ahead, and was far up the red road when the great mules galloped into sight and the long whip snapped above their backs. The Colonel was still excited.

  “That cotton must be ours, Harry—all of it. And see that none is stolen. We’ve got no contract with the wench, so don’t dally with her.” But Harry said firmly, quietly:

  “It’s fine cotton, and she raised it; she must be paid well for it.” Colonel Cresswell glanced at him with something between contempt and astonishment on his face.

  “You go along with the ladies,” Harry added; “I’ll see to this cotton.” Mary Taylor’s smile had rewarded him; now he must get rid of his company—before Zora returned.

  It was dark when the cotton came; such a load as Cresswell’s store had never seen before. Zora watched it weighed, received the cotton checks, and entered the store. Only the clerk was there, and he was closing. He pointed her carelessly to the office in the back part. She went into the small dim room, and laying the cotton-check on the desk, stood waiting. Slowly the hopelessness and bitterness of it all came back in a great whelming flood. What was the use of trying for anything? She was lost forever. The world was against her, and again she saw the fingers of Elspeth—the long black claw-like talons that clutched and dragged her down—down. She did not struggle—she dropped her hands listlessly, wearily, and stood but half conscious as the door opened and Mr. Harry Cresswell entered the dimly lighted room. She opened her eyes. She had expected his father. Somewhere way down in the depths of her nature the primal tiger awoke and snarled. She was suddenly alive from hair to finger tip. Harry Cresswell paused a second and swept her full length with his eye—her profile, the long supple line of bosom and hip, the little foot. Then he closed the door softly and walked slowly toward her. She stood like stone, without a quiver; only her eye followed the crooked line of the Cresswell blue blood on his marble forehead as she looked down from her greater height; her hand closed almost caressingly on a rusty poker lying on the stove nearby; and as she sensed the hot breath of him she felt herself purring in a half heard whisper.

  “I should not like—to kill you.”

  He looked at her long and steadily as he passed to his desk. Slowly he lighted a cigarette, opened the great ledger, and compared the cotton-check with it.

  “Three thousand pounds,” he announced in a careless tone. “Yes, that will make about two bales of lint. It’s extra cotton—say fifteen cents a pound—one hundred fifty dollars—seventy-five dollars to you—h’m.” He took a note-book out of his pocket, pushed his hat back on his head, and paused to relight his cigarette.

  “Let’s see—your rent and rations—”

  “Elspeth pays no rent,” she said slowly, but he did not seem to hear.

  “Your rent and rations with the five years’ back debt,”—he made a hasty calculation—“will be one hundred dollars. That leaves you twenty-five in our debt. Here’s your receipt.”

  The blow had fallen. She did not wince nor cry out. She took the receipt, calmly, and walked out into the darkness.

  They had stolen the Silver Fleece.

  What should she do? She never thought of appeal to courts, for Colonel Cresswell was Justice of the Peace and his son was bailiff. Why had they stolen from her? She knew. She was now penniless, and in a sense helpless. She was now a peon bound to a master’s bidding. If Elspeth chose to sign a contract of work for her to-morrow, it would mean slavery, jail, or hounded running away. What would Elspeth do? One never knew. Zora walked on. An hour ago it seemed that this last blow must have killed her. But now it was different. Into her first despair had crept, in one fierce moment, grim determination. Somewhere in the world sat a great dim Injustice which had veiled the light before her young eyes, just as she raised them to the morning. With the veiling, death had come into her heart.

  And yet, they should not kill her; they should not enslave her. A desperate resolve to find some way up toward the light, if not to it, formed itself within her. She would not fall into the pit opening before her. Somehow, somewhere lay The Way. She must never fall lower; never be utterly despicable in the eyes of the man she had loved. There was no dream of forgiveness, of purification, of re-kindled love; all these she placed sadly and gently into the dead past. But in awful earnestness, she turned toward the future; struggling blindly, groping in half formed plans for a way.

  She came thus into the room where sat Miss Smith, strangely pallid beneath her dusky skin. But there lay a light in her eyes.

  Eighteen

  THE COTTON CORNER

  All over the land the cotton had foamed in great white flakes under the winter sun. The Silver Fleece lay like a mighty mantle across the earth. Black men and mules had staggered beneath its burden, while deep songs welled in the hearts of men; for the Fleece was goodly and gleaming and soft, and men dreamed of the gold it would buy. All the roads in the country had been lined with wagons—a million wagons speeding to and fro with straining mules and laughing black men, bearing bubbling masses of piled white Fleece. The gins were still roaring and spitting flames and smoke—fifty thousand of them in town and vale. Then hoarse iron throats were filled with fifteen billion pounds of white-fleeced, black-specked cotton, for the whirling saws to tear out the seed and fling five thousand million pounds of the silken fibre to the press.

  And there again the black men sang, like dark earth-spirits flitting in twilight; the presses creaked and groaned; closer and closer they pressed the silken fleece. It quivered, trembled, and then lay cramped, dead, and still, in massive, hard, square bundles, tied with iron strings. Out fell the heavy bales, thousand upon thousand, million upon million, until they settled over the South like some vast dull-white swarm of birds. Colonel Cresswell and his son, in these days, had a long and earnest conversation perforated here and there by explosions of the Colonel’s wrath. The Colonel could not understand some things.

  “They want us to revive the Farmers’ League?” he fiercely demanded.

  “Yes,” Harry calmly replied.

  “And throw the rest of our capital after the fifty thousand dollars we’ve already lost?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were fool enough to consent—”

  “Wait, Father—and don’t get excited. Listen. Cotton is going up—”

  “Of course it’s going up! Short crop and big demand—”

  “Cotton is going up, and then it’s going to fall.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “I know it; the trust has got money and credit enough to force it down.”

  “Well, what then?” The Colonel glared.

  “Then somebody will corner it.”

  �
�The Farmers’ League won’t stand—”

  “Precisely. The Farmers’ League can do the cornering and hold it for higher prices.”

  “Lord, son! if we only could!” groaned the Colonel.

  “We can; we’ll have unlimited credit.”

  “But—but—” stuttered the bewildered Colonel, “I don’t understand. Why should the trust—”

  “Nonsense, Father—what’s the use of understanding. Our advantage is plain, and John Taylor guarantees the thing.”

  “Who’s John Taylor?” snorted the Colonel. “Why should we trust him?”

  “Well,” said Harry slowly, “he wants to marry Helen—”

  His father grew apopletic.

  “I’m not saying he will, Father; I’m only saying that he wants to,” Harry made haste to placate the rising tide of wrath.

  “No Southern gentleman—” began the Colonel. But Harry shrugged his shoulders.

  “Which is better, to be crushed by the trust or to escape at their expense, even if that escape involves unwarranted assumptions on the part of one of them? I tell you, Father, the code of the Southern gentleman won’t work in Wall Street.”

  “And I’ll tell you why—there are no Southern gentlemen,” growled his father.

  The Silver Fleece was golden, for its prices were flying aloft. Mr. Caldwell told Colonel Cresswell that he confidently expected twelve-cent cotton.

  “The crop is excellent and small, scarcely ten million bales,” he declared. “The price is bound to go up.”

  Colonel Cresswell was hesitant, even doubtful; the demand for cotton at high prices usually fell off rapidly and he had heard rumors of curtailed mill production. While, then, he hoped for high prices he advised the Farmers’ League to be on guard.

  Mr. Caldwell seemed to be right, for cotton rose to ten cents a pound—ten and a half—eleven—and then the South began to see visions and to dream dreams.

  “Yes, my dear,” said Mr. Maxwell, whose lands lay next to the Cresswells’ on the northwest, “yes, if cotton goes to twelve or thirteen cents as seems probable, I think we can begin the New House”—for Mrs. Maxwell’s cherished dream was a pillared mansion like the Cresswells’.

  Mr. Tolliver looked at his house and barns. “Well, daughter, if this crop sells at twelve cents, I’ll be on my feet again, and I won’t have to sell that land to the nigger school after all. Once out of the clutch of the Cresswells—well, I think we can have a coat of paint.” And he laughed as he had not laughed in ten years.

  Down in the bottoms west of the swamp a man and woman were figuring painfully on an old slate. He was light brown and she was yellow.

  “Honey,” he said tremblingly, “I b’lieve we can do it—if cotton goes to twelve cents, we can pay the mortgage.”

  Two miles north of the school an old black woman was shouting and waving her arms. “If cotton goes to twelve cents we can pay out and be free!” and she threw her apron over her head and wept, gathering her children in her arms.

  But even as she cried a flash and tremor shook the South. Far away to the north a great spider sat weaving his web. The office looked down from the clouds on lower Broadway, and was soft with velvet and leather. Swift, silent messengers hurried in and out, and Mr. Easterly, deciding the time was ripe, called his henchman to him.

  “Taylor, we’re ready—go South.”

  And John Taylor rose, shook hands silently, and went.

  As he entered Cresswell’s plantation store three days later, a colored woman with a little boy turned sadly away from the counter.

  “No, aunty,” the clerk was telling her, “calico is too high; can’t let you have any till we see how your cotton comes out.”

  “I just wanted a bit; I promised the boy—”

  “Go on, go on—Why, Mr. Taylor!” And the little boy burst into tears while he was hurried out.

  “Tightening up on the tenants?” asked Taylor.

  “Yes; these niggers are mighty extravagant. Besides, cotton fell a little today—eleven to ten and three-fourths; just a flurry, I reckon. Had you heard?”

  Mr. Taylor said he had heard, and he hurried on. Next morning the long shining wires of that great Broadway web trembled and flashed again and cotton went to ten cents.

  “No house this year, I fear,” quoth Mr. Maxwell, bitterly.

  The next day nine and a half was the quotation, and men began to look at each other and asked questions.

  “Paper says the crop is larger than the government estimate,” said Tolliver, and added, “There’ll be no painting this year.” He looked toward the Smith School and thought of the five thousand dollars waiting; but he hesitated. John Taylor had carefully mentioned seven thousand dollars as a price he was willing to pay and “perhaps more.” Was Cresswell back of Taylor? Tolliver was suspicious and moved to delay matters.

  “It’s manipulation and speculation in New York,” said Colonel Cresswell, “and the Farmers’ League must begin operations.”

  The local paper soon had an editorial on “our distinguished fellow citizen, Colonel Cresswell,” and his efforts to revive the Farmers’ League. It was understood that Colonel Cresswell was risking his whole private fortune to hold the price of cotton, and some effort seemed to be needed, for cotton dropped to nine cents within a week. Swift negotiations ensued, and a meeting of the executive committee of the Farmers’ League was held in Montgomery. A system of warehouses and warehouse certificates was proposed.

  “But that will cost money,” responded each of the dozen big landlords who composed the committee; whereupon Harry Cresswell introduced John Taylor, who represented thirty millions of Southern bank stock.

  “I promise you credit to any reasonable amount,” said Mr. Taylor, “I believe in cotton—the present price is abnormal.” And Mr. Taylor knew whereof he spoke, for when he sent a cipher despatch North, cotton dropped to eight and a half. The Farmers’ League leased three warehouses at Savannah, Montgomery, and New Orleans.

  Then silently the South gripped itself and prepared for battle. Men stopped spending, business grew dull, and millions of eyes were glued to the blackboards of the cotton-exchange. Tighter and tighter the reins grew on the backs of the black tenants.

  “Miss Smith, is yo’ got just a drap of coffee to lend me? Mr. Cresswell won’t give me none at the store and I’se just starving for some,” said Aunt Rachel from over the hill. “We won’t git free this year, Miss Smith, not this year,” she concluded plaintively.

  Cotton fell to seven and a half cents and the muttered protest became angry denunciation. Why was it? Who was doing it?

  Harry Cresswell went to Montgomery. He was getting nervous. The thing was too vast. He could not grasp it. It set his head in a whirl. Harry Cresswell was not a bad man—are there any bad men? He was a man who from the day he first wheedled his black mammy into submission, down to his thirty-sixth year, had seldom known what it was voluntarily to deny himself or curb a desire. To rise when he would, eat what he craved, and do what the passing fancy suggested had long been his day’s programme. Such emptiness of life and aim had to be filled, and it was filled; he helped his father sometimes with the plantations, but he helped spasmodically and played at work.

  The unregulated fire of energy and delicacy of nervous poise within him continually hounded him to the verge of excess and sometimes beyond. Cool, quiet, and gentlemanly as he was by rule of his clan, the ice was thin and underneath raged unappeased fires. He craved the madness of alcohol in his veins till his delicate hands trembled of mornings. The women whom he bent above in languid, veiled-eyed homage, feared lest they love him, and what work was to others gambling was to him.

  The Cotton Combine, then, appealed to him overpoweringly—to his passion for wealth, to his passion for gambling. But once entered upon the game it drove him to fear and frenzy: first, it was a long game and Harry Cresswell was not trained to waiting, and, secondly, it was a game whose intricacies he did not know. In vain did he try to study the matter through. He orde
red books from the North, he subscribed for financial journals, he received special telegraphic reports only to toss them away, curse his valet, and call for another brandy. After all, he kept saying to himself, what guarantee, what knowledge had he that this was not a “damned Yankee trick”?

  Now that the web was weaving its last mesh in early January he haunted Montgomery, and on this day when it seemed that things must culminate or he would go mad, he hastened again down to the Planters’ Hotel and was quickly ushered to John Taylor’s room. The place was filled with tobacco smoke. An electric ticker was drumming away in one corner, a telephone ringing on the desk, and messenger boys hovered outside the door and raced to and fro.

  “Well,” asked Cresswell, maintaining his composure by an effort, “how are things?”

  “Great!” returned Taylor. “League holds three million bales and controls five. It’s the biggest corner in years.”

  “But how’s cotton?”

  “Ticker says six and three-fourths.”

  Cresswell sat down abruptly opposite Taylor, looking at him fixedly.

  “That last drop means liabilities of a hundred thousand to us,” he said slowly.

  “Exactly,” Taylor blandly admitted.

  Beads of sweat gathered on Cresswell’s forehead. He looked at the scrawny iron man opposite, who had already forgotten his presence. He ordered whiskey, and taking paper and pencil began to figure, drinking as he figured. Slowly the blood crept out of his white face leaving it whiter, and went surging and pounding in his heart. Poverty—that was what those figures spelled. Poverty—unclothed, wineless poverty, to dig and toil like a “nigger” from morning until night, and to give up horses and carriages and women; that was what they spelled.

  “How much—farther will it drop?” he asked harshly.

  Taylor did not look up.