The Quest of the Silver Fleece Part 11

"No, but you can't always help seeing and meeting it," laughed Miss Taylor.

"Certainly not. I don't try; I court the meeting and seeing. It is the only way."

"Well, perhaps, for us--but not for a boy like Bles, and a girl like Zora."

"True; men and women must exercise judgment in their intercourse and"--she glanced sharply at Miss Taylor--"my dear, you yourself must not forget that Bles Alwyn is a man."

Far up the road came a low, long, musical shouting; then with creaking and straining of wagons, four great black mules dashed into sight with twelve bursting bales of yellowish cotton looming and swaying behind.

The drivers and helpers were lolling and laughing and singing, but Miss Taylor did not hear nor see. She had sat suddenly upright; her face had flamed crimson, and then went dead white.

"Miss--Miss Smith!" she gasped, overwhelmed with dismay, a picture of wounded pride and consternation.

Miss Smith turned around very methodically and took her hand; but while she spoke the girl merely stared at her in stony silence.

"Now, dear, don't mean more than I do. I'm an old woman, and I've seen many things. This is but a little corner of the world, and yet many people pa.s.s here in thirty years. The trouble with new teachers who come is, that like you, they cannot see black folk as human. All to them are either impossible Zoras, or else lovable Blessings. They forget that Zora is not to be annihilated, but studied and understood, and that Bles is a young man of eighteen and not a clod."

"But that he should dare--" Mary began breathlessly.

"He hasn't dared," Miss Smith went gently on. "No thought of you but as a teacher has yet entered his dear, simple head. But, my point is simply this: he's a man, and a human one, and if you keep on making much over him, and talking to him and petting him, he'll have the right to interpret your manner in his own way--the same that any young man would."

"But--but, he's a--a--"

"A Negro. To be sure, he is; and a man in addition. Now, dear, don't take this too much to heart; this is not a rebuke, but a clumsy warning.

I am simply trying to make clear to you _why_ you should be careful.

Treat poor Zora a little more lovingly, and Bles a little less warmly.

They are just human--but, oh! so human."

Mary Taylor rose up stiffly and mumbled a brief good-night. She went to her room, and sat down in the dark. The mere mention of the thing was to her so preposterous--no, loathsome, she kept repeating.

She slowly undressed in the dark, and heard the rumbling of the cotton wagons as they swayed toward town. The cry of the Naked was sweeping the world, and yonder in the night black men were answering the call. They knew not what or why they answered, but obeyed the irresistible call, with hearts light and song upon their lips--the Song of Service. They lashed their mules and drank their whiskey, and all night the piled fleece swept by Mary Taylor's window, flying--flying to that far cry.

Miss Taylor turned uneasily in her bed and jerked the bed-clothes about her ears.

"Mrs. Vanderpool is right," she confided to the night, with something of the awe with which one suddenly comprehends a hidden oracle; "there must be a difference, always, always! That impudent Negro!"

All night she dreamed, and all day,--especially when trim and immaculate she sat in her chair and looked down upon fifty dark faces--and upon Zora.

Zora sat thinking. She saw neither Miss Taylor nor the long straight rows of desks and faces. She heard neither the drone of the spellers nor did she hear Miss Taylor say, "Zora!" She heard and saw none of this.

She only heard the prattle of the birds in the wood, far down where the Silver Fleece would be planted.

For the time of cotton-planting was coming; the gray and drizzle of December was past and the hesitation, of January. Already a certain warmth and glow had stolen into the air, and the Swamp was calling its child with low, seductive voice. She knew where the first leaves were bursting, where tiny flowers nestled, and where young living things looked upward to the light and cried and crawled. A wistful longing was stealing into her heart. She wanted to be free. She wanted to run and dance and sing, but Bles wanted--

"Zora!"

This time she heard the call, but did not heed it. Miss Taylor was very tiresome, and was forever doing and saying silly things. So Zora paid no attention, but sat still and thought. Yes, she would show Bles the place that very night; she had kept it secret from him until now, out of perverseness, out of her love of mystery and secrets. But tonight, after school, when he met her on the big road with the clothes, she would take him and show him the chosen spot.

Soon she was aware that school had been dismissed, and she leisurely gathered up her books and rose. Mary Taylor regarded her in perplexed despair. Oh, these people! Mrs. Vanderpool was right: culture and--some ma.s.ses, at least--were not to be linked; and, too, culture and work--were they incompatible? At any rate, culture and _this_ work were.

Now, there was Mrs. Vanderpool--she toiled not, neither did she spin, and yet! If all these folk were like poor, stupid, docile Jennie it would be simpler, but what earthly sense was there in trying do to anything with a girl like Zora, so stupid in some matters, so startlingly bright in others, and so stubborn in everything? Here, she was doing some work twice as well and twice as fast as the cla.s.s, and other work she would not touch because she "didn't like it." Her cla.s.sification in school was nearly as difficult as her cla.s.sification in the world, and Miss Taylor reached up impatiently and removed the gold pin from her stock to adjust it more comfortably when Zora sauntered past unseeing, unheeding, with that curious gliding walk which Miss Taylor called stealthy. She laid the pin on the desk and on sudden impulse spoke again to the girl as she arranged her neck tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs.

"Zora," she said evenly, "why didn't you come to cla.s.s when I called?"

"I didn't hear you," said Zora, looking at her full-eyed and telling the half-truth easily.

Miss Taylor was sure Zora was lying, and she knew that she had lied to her on other occasions. Indeed, she had found lying customary in this community, and she had a New England horror of it. She looked at Zora disapprovingly, while Zora looked at her quite impersonally, but steadily. Then Miss Taylor braced herself, mentally, and took the war into Africa.

"Do you ever tell lies, Zora?"

"Yes."

"Don't you know that is a wicked, bad habit?"

"Why?"

"Because G.o.d hates them."

"How does _you_ know He does?" Zora's tone was still impersonal.

"He hates all evil."

"But why is lies evil?"

"Because they make us deceive each other."

"Is that wrong?"

"Yes."

Zora bent forward and looked squarely into Miss Taylor's blue eyes. Miss Taylor looked into the velvet blackness of hers and wondered what they veiled.

"Is it wrong," asked Zora, "to make believe you likes people when you don't, when you'se afeared of them and thinks they may rub off and dirty you?"

"Why--why--yes, if you--if you, deceive."

"Then you lies sometimes, don't you?"

Miss Taylor stared helplessly at the solemn eyes that seemed to look so deeply into her.

"Perhaps--I do, Zora; I'm sure I don't mean to, and--I hope G.o.d will forgive me."

Zora softened.

"Oh, I reckon He will if He's a good G.o.d, because He'd know that lies like that are heaps better than blabbing the truth right out. Only," she added severely, "you mustn't keep saying it's wicked to lie 'cause it ain't. Sometimes I lies," she reflected pensively, "and sometimes I don't--it depends."

Miss Taylor forgot her collar, and fingered the pin on the desk. She felt at once a desperate desire to know this girl better and to establish her own authority. Yet how should she do it? She kept toying with the pin, and Zora watched her. Then Miss Taylor said, absently:

"Zora, what do you propose to do when you grow up?"

Zora considered.