The Quest of the Silver Fleece quotes

He who would tell a tale must look toward three ideals: to tell it well, to tell it beautifully, and to tell the truth.

The first is the Gift of God, the second is the Vision of Genius, but the third is the Reward of Honesty.

Night fell. The red waters of the swamp grew sinister and sullen.

The tall pines lost their slimness and stood in wide blurred blotches all across the way, and a great shadowy bird arose, wheeled and melted, murmuring, into the black-green sky.

As she danced she sang. He heard her voice as before, fluttering like a bird’s in the full sweetness of her utter music.

It was no tune nor melody, it was just formless, boundless music.

The boy forgot himself and all the world besides. All his darkness was sudden light; dazzled he crept forward, bewildered, fascinated, until with one last wild whirl the elf-girl paused.

“Please, ma’am. I’ve come to school,” answered a tall black boy with a bundle.

“Well, why don’t you go to the office?”

Then she saw his face and hesitated. She felt again the old motherly instinct to be the first to welcome the new pupil; a luxury which, in later years, the endless push of details had denied her.

but I’m quite through trying to turn natural servants into masters of me and mine. I—hope I’m not too blunt; I hope I make myself clear. You know, statistics show—”

“Drat statistics!” Miss Smith had flashed impatiently. “These are folks.”

Mrs. Vanderpool smiled indulgently. “To be sure,” she murmured, “but what sort of folks?”

“

I want you to count, and I want to count, too; but I don’t want us to be the only ones that count.

I want to live in a world where every soul counts—white, black, and yellow—all. That’s what I’m teaching these children here—to count, and not to be like dumb, driven cattle. If you don’t believe in this, of course you cannot help us.”

He looked at her with twinkling eyes.

“Well, you see, Miss Taylor, it’s like this: farming don’t seem to be your specialty.”

The word was often on Miss Taylor’s lips, and she recognized it. Despite herself she smiled again.

“What sort of people are the Cresswells?” she asked.

“The old man’s a fool; the young one a rascal; the girl a ninny,” was Miss Smith’s succinct and acid classification of the county’s first family; adding, as she rose, “but they own us body and soul.”

She hurried out of the dining-room without further remark. Miss Smith was more patient with black folk than with white.

“Oh, yaas, ma’am—dey’se good white folks.”

“Oh, yaas, ma’am⁠—course you knows white folks will be white folks⁠—white folks will be white folks. Your servant, ma’am.” And the swamp swallowed him.

The boy’s eyes followed him as he whipped up the horse.

At first she pounced upon him in mirthful, almost impish glee, teasing and mocking and half scaring him, despite his fifteen years of young manhood.

“Yes, they is devils down yonder behind the swamp,” she would whisper, warningly

, when, after the first meeting, he had crept back again and again, half fascinated, half amused to greet her; “I’se seen ’em, I’se heard ’em, ’cause my mammy is a witch.”

The cry of the naked was sweeping the world.

From the peasant toiling in Russia, the lady lolling in London, the chieftain burning in Africa, and the Eskimo freezing in Alaska; from long lines of hungry men, from patient sad-eyed women, from old folk and creeping children went up the cry, “Clothes, clothes!”

“Everybody likes some kinds of work,” she insisted.

“If you likes it, it ain’t work,” declared Zora

; but Mary Taylor proceeded around her circumscribed circle:

the far away look was in her eyes and they were shining. She was beautiful as she stood there—strangely, almost uncannily, but startlingly beautiful with her rich dark skin, softly moulded features, and wonderful eyes.

“My people?⁠—my people?” she murmured, half to herself.

“Do you know my people? They don’t never work; they plays. They is all little, funny dark people. They flies and creeps and crawls, slippery-like; and they cries and calls. Ah, my people! my poor little people!

Miss Taylor started up. “Zora, I believe you’re crazy!” she cried. But Zora was looking at her calmly again.

“We’se both crazy, ain’t we?” she returned, with a simplicity that left the teacher helpless.

Miss Taylor hurried out, forgetting her pin. Zora looked it over leisurely, and tried it on. She decided that she liked it, and putting it in her pocket, went out too.

“I don’t want your old gifts,” she almost hissed.

“You don’t own what you don’t need and can’t use. God owns it and I’m going to send it back to Him.”

With a swift motion she whipped the pin from her pocket and raised her arm to hurl it into the swamp. Bles caught her hand. He caught it lightly and smiled sorrowfully into her eyes.

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.

“Why, Aunt Rachel, it’s slavery!” cried the lady in dismay. Aunt Rachel did not offer to dispute her declaration.

“Yas’m, hit’s slavery,” she agreed.

“I hates it mighty bad, too, ’cause I wanted de little chillens in school; but—” The old woman broke down and sobbed.

Miss Smith laid a kindly hand upon his shoulder.

“I’ve been waiting thirty years, Robert,” she said, with feeling, and he hung his head.

“I wanted to talk about it,” he awkwardly responded, turning slowly away. But Miss Smith stopped him.

The great trees in their regular curving rows must have been planted more than half a century ago. The lawn was well tended and the flowers. Yes, there were signs of taste and wealth.

“But it was built on a moan,” cried Miss Smith to herself, passionately

, and she would not look round any more, but stared straight ahead where she saw old Colonel Cresswell smoking and reading on the veranda.

The children had gathered, quietly, almost timidly, and before the distinguished company realized it, they turned to meet that battery of four hundred eyes.

A human eye is a wonderful thing when it simply waits and watches.

Not one of these little things alone would have been worth more than a glance, but together, they became mighty, portentous. Mr. Bocombe got out his notebook and wrote furiously therein. Dr. Boldish, naturally the appointed spokesman, looked helplessly about and whispered to Mrs. Vanderpool:

Zora turned away with a gesture of impatience.

“You were born in ice,” she retorted, adding a bit more tenderly, “in clear strong ice; but I was born in fire. I live⁠—I love; that’s all.”

And she sat down again, despairingly, and stared at the dull swamp. Miss Smith stood for a moment and closed her eyes upon a vision.

Black giants and pygmies were there; kerchiefed aunties, giggling black girls, saffron beauties, and loafing white men. There were mules and horses and oxen, wagons and buggies and carts; but above all and in all, rushing through, piled and flying, bound and baled—was cotton.

Cotton was currency; cotton was merchandise; cotton was conversation.

All this was “beautiful” to Mrs. Grey and “unusually interesting” to Mrs. Vanderpool. To Mary Taylor it had the fascination of a puzzle whose other side she had already been partially studying.

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.

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.

“I couldn’t find the Way—and I wanted to forget.”

“People in hell don’t forget,” was the matter-of-fact comment.

“And, Zora, what way do you seek? The way where?”

Zora gathered up the clothes and things and shaded the windows, glancing the while down on the street.

“Everybody is going, going,” she murmured. “I wonder where. Don’t they ever get there?”

“Few arrive,” said Mrs. Vanderpool. Zora softly bent and passed her cool soft hand over her forehead.

“Everybody is going, going,” she murmured. “I wonder where. Don’t they ever get there?”

“Few arrive,” said Mrs. Vanderpool.

Zora softly bent and passed her cool soft hand over her forehead.

“I wonder what I shall make out of her?” queried Mrs. Vanderpool.

“Do you know, I believe I could mould her into a lady if she were not black.”

Mary Cresswell laughed. “With that hair?”

“What is—I thought the President appointed ambassadors.”

“To be sure, but we appoint Presidents,” laughed Mr. Easterly.

“Good day. I shall hope to see you in Washington.”

“

Is there anything in Washington that the South does not already own?

”

This was the thing poor blind Bles was trying to attack by “appeals” for “justice.” Nonsense!

Does one “appeal” to the red-eyed beast that throttles him?

No. He composes himself, looks death in the eye, and speaks softly, on the chance. Whereupon Miss Wynn composed herself, waved gayly at a passing acquaintance, and matched some ribbons in a department store. The clerk was new and anxious to sell.

“

Bles, almost thou persuadest me⁠—to be a fool. Now go.

”

“

I used to think a lie a little thing, a convenience; but now I see. It is a great No and it kills things.

You remember that day when Mr. Easterly called?”

“You are right, Zora. I promised—and—I lied.

Liars have no place in heaven and heaven is doubtless a beautiful place⁠—but oh, Zora! you haven’t seen Paris!

”

“

Thank you. I do not want money; I want justice.

”

Zora paused; she did not know. In her world there was little calculation of money.

Credit and not cash is the currency of the Black Belt.

She had been pleased to receive the check, but she had not examined it.

“Some of them may—most of them won’t. A few of them with brains will help us rule the rest with money.

We’ll plant cotton mills beside the cotton fields, use whites to keep niggers in their place, and the fear of niggers to keep the poorer whites in theirs.

”

only during the daylight Sundays did its murmur die to a sibilant hiss. All the week its doors were filled with the coming and going of men and women and children: many men, more women, and greater and greater throngs of children.

It seemed to devour children, sitting with its myriad eyes gleaming and its black maw open, drawing in the pale white mites, sucking their blood and spewing them out paler and ever paler.

The face of the town began to change, showing a ragged tuberculous looking side with dingy homes in short and homely rows.

“

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

”