_Eleven_
THE FLOWERING OF THE FLEECE
"Zora," observed Miss Smith, "it's a great blessing not to needspectacles, isn't it?"
Zora thought that it was; but she was wondering just what spectacles hadto do with the complaint she had brought to the office from Miss Taylor.
"I'm always losing my glasses and they get dirty and--Oh, dear! nowwhere is that paper?"
Zora pointed silently to the complaint.
"No, not that--another paper. It must be in my room. Don't you want tocome up and help me look?"
They went up to the clean, bare room, with its white iron bed, its cool,spotless shades and shining windows. Zora walked about softly andlooked, while Miss Smith quietly searched on desk and bureau, paying noattention to the girl. For the time being she was silent.
"I sometimes wish," she began at length, "I had a bright-eyed girl likeyou to help me find and place things."
Zora made no comment.
"Sometimes Bles helps me," added Miss Smith, guilefully.
Zora looked sharply at her. "Could I help?" she asked, almost timidly.
"Why, I don't know,"--the answer was deliberate. "There are one or twolittle things perhaps--"
Placing a hand gently upon Zora's shoulder, she pointed out a few oddtasks, and left the girl busily doing them; then she returned to theoffice, and threw Miss Taylor's complaint into the waste-basket.
For a week or more Zora slipped in every day and performed the littletasks that Miss Smith laid out: she sorted papers, dusted the bureau,hung a curtain; she did not do the things very well, and she broke somechina, but she worked earnestly and quickly, and there was no thought ofpay. Then, too, did not Bles praise her with a happy smile, as together,day after day, they stood and watched the black dirt where the SilverFleece lay planted? She dreamed and sang over that dark field, and againand again appealed to him: "S'pose it shouldn't come up after all?" Andhe would laugh and say that of course it would come up.
One day, when Zora was helping Miss Smith in the bedroom, she pausedwith her arms full of clothes fresh from the laundry.
"Where shall I put these?"
Miss Smith looked around. "They might go in there," she said, pointingto a door. Zora opened it. A tiny bedroom was disclosed, with one broadwindow looking toward the swamp; white curtains adorned it, and whitehangings draped the plain bureau and wash-stand and the little bed.There was a study table, and a small bookshelf holding a few books, allsimple and clean. Zora paused uncertainly, and surveyed the room.
"Sometimes when you're tired and want to be alone you can come up here,Zora," said Miss Smith carelessly. "No one uses this room."
Zora caught her breath sharply, but said nothing. The next day MissSmith said to her when she came in:
"I'm busy now, dear, but you go up to your little room and read and I'llcall."
Zora quietly obeyed. An hour later Miss Smith looked in, then she closedthe door lightly and left. Another hour flew by before Zora hurrieddown.
"I was reading, and I forgot," she said.
"It's all right," returned Miss Smith. "I didn't need you. And any day,after you get all your lessons, I think Miss Taylor will excuse you andlet you go to your room and read." Miss Taylor, it transpired, was morethan glad.
Day after day Bles and Zora visited the field; but ever the ground layan unrelieved black beneath the bright sun, and they would goreluctantly home again, today there was much work to be done, and Zoralabored steadily and eagerly, never pausing, and gaining in deftness andcare.
In the afternoon Bles went to town with the school wagon. A light showerflew up from the south, lingered a while and fled, leaving a fragrancein the air. For a moment Zora paused, and her nostrils quivered; thenwithout a word she slipped down-stairs, glided into the swamp, and spedaway to the island. She swung across the tree and a low, delighted crybubbled on her lips. All the rich, black ground was sprinkled withtender green. She bent above the verdant tenderness and kissed it; thenshe rushed back, bursting into the room.
"_It's come! It's come!--the Silver Fleece!_"
Miss Smith was startled.
"The Silver Fleece!" she echoed in bewilderment.
Zora hesitated. It came over her all at once that this one greatall-absorbing thing meant nothing to the gaunt tired-look woman beforeher.
"Would Bles care if I told?" she asked doubtfully.
"No," Miss Smith ventured.
And then the girl crouched at her feet and told the dream and thestory. Many factors were involved that were quite foreign to the olderwoman's nature and training. The recital brought to her New England mindmany questions of policy and propriety. And yet, as she looked down uponthe dark face, hot with enthusiasm, it all seemed somehow more thanright. Slowly and lightly Miss Smith slipped her arm about Zora, andnodded and smiled a perfect understanding. They looked out together intothe darkening twilight.
"It is so late and wet and you're tired tonight--don't you think you'dbetter sleep in your little room?"
Zora sat still. She thought of the noisy flaming cabin and the darkswamp; but a contrasting thought of the white bed made her timid, andslowly she shook her head. Nevertheless Miss Smith led her to the room.
"Here are things for you to wear," she pointed out, opening the bureau,"and here is the bath-room." She left the girl standing in the middle ofthe floor.
In time Zora came to stay often at Miss Smith's cottage, and to learnnew and unknown ways of living and dressing. She still refused to board,for that would cost more than she could pay yet, and she would accept nocharity. Gradually an undemonstrative friendship sprang up between thepale old gray-haired teacher and the dark young black-haired girl.Delicately, too, but gradually, the companionship of Bles and Zora wasguided and regulated. Of mornings Zora would hurry through her lessonsand get excused to fly to the swamp, to work and dream alone. At noonBles would run down, and they would linger until he must hurry back todinner. After school he would go again, working while she was busy inMiss Smith's office, and returning later, would linger awhile to tellZora of his day while she busied herself with her little tasks. Saturdaymornings they would go to the swamp and work together, and sometimesMiss Smith, stealing away from curious eyes, would come and sit and talkwith them as they toiled.
In those days, for these two souls, earth came very near to heaven.Both were in the midst of that mighty change from youth to womanhood andmanhood. Their manner toward each other by degrees grew shyer and morethoughtful. There was less of comradeship, but the little meant more.The rough good fellowship was silently put aside; they no longer lightlyclasped hands; and each at times wondered, in painfulself-consciousness, if the other cared.
Then began, too, that long and subtle change wherein a soul, until nowunmindful of its wrappings, comes suddenly to consciousness of body andclothes; when it gropes and tries to adjust one with the other, andthrough them to give to the inner deeper self, finer and fullerexpression. One saw it easily, almost suddenly, in Alwyn's Sunday suit,vivid neckties, and awkward fads.
Slower, subtler, but more striking was the change in Zora, as she beganto earn bits of pin money in the office and to learn to sew. Dresseshung straighter; belts served a better purpose; stockings were smoother;underwear was daintier. Then her hair--that great dark mass of immovableinfinitely curled hair--began to be subdued and twisted and combeduntil, with steady pains and study, it lay in thick twisted braids abouther velvet forehead, like some shadowed halo. All this came much moreslowly and spasmodically than one tells it. Few noticed the change much;none noticed all; and yet there came a night--a student's social--whenwith a certain suddenness the whole school, teachers and pupils,realized the newness of the girl, and even Bles was startled.
He had bought her in town, at Christmas time, a pair of white satinslippers, partly to test the smallness of her feet on which in youngerdays he had rallied her, and partly because she had mentioned a possiblewhite dress. They were a cheap, plain pair but dainty, and they fittedwell.
r /> When the evening came and the students were marching and the teachers,save Miss Smith, were sitting rather primly apart and commenting, sheentered the room. She was a little late, and a hush greeted her. Oneboy, with the inimitable drawl of the race, pushed back his ice-creamand addressed it with a mournful head-shake:
"Go way, honey, yo' los' yo' tas'e!"
The dress was plain and fitted every curving of a healthy girlish form.She paused a moment white-bodied and white-limbed but dark andvelvet-armed, her full neck and oval head rising rich and almost blackabove, with its deep-lighted eyes and crown of silent darkling hair.
To some, such a revelation of grace and womanliness in this hoyden, thegentle swelling of lankness to beauty, of lowliness to shy self-poise,was a sudden joy, to others a mere blindness. Mary Taylor was perplexedand in some indefinite way amazed; and many of the other teachers saw nobeauty, only a strangeness that brought a smile. They were such as knowbeauty by convention only, and find it lip-ringed, hoop-skirted,tattooed, or corsetted, as time and place decree.
The change in Zora, however, had been neither cataclysmic norrevolutionary and it was yet far--very far--from complete. She still ranand romped in the woods, and dreamed her dreams; she still waspassionately independent and "queer." Tendencies merely had becomemanifest, some dominant. She would, unhindered, develop to a brilliant,sumptuous womanhood; proud, conquering, full-blooded, and deepbosomed--a passionate mother of men. Herein lay all her early wildnessand strangeness. Herein lay, as yet half hidden, dimly sensed and allunspoken, the power of a mighty all-compelling love for one human soul,and, through it, for all the souls of men. All this lay growing anddeveloping; but as yet she was still a girl, with a new shyness andcomeliness and a bold, searching heart.
In the field of the Silver Fleece all her possibilities were beginningto find expression. These new-born green things hidden far down in theswamp, begotten in want and mystery, were to her a living wonderfulfairy tale come true. All the latent mother in her brooded over them;all her brilliant fancy wove itself about them. They were herdream-children, and she tended them jealously; they were her Hope, andshe worshipped them. When the rabbits tried the tender plants shewatched hours to drive them off, and catching now and then a pulsingpink-eyed invader, she talked to it earnestly:
"Brer Rabbit--poor little Brer Rabbit, don't you know you mustn't eatZora's cotton? Naughty, naughty Brer Rabbit." And then she would show itwhere she had gathered piles of fragrant weeds for it and its fellows.
The golden green of the first leaves darkened, and the plants sprangforward steadily. Never before was such a magnificent beginning, a fullmonth ahead of other cotton. The rain swept down in laughing, bubblingshowers, and laved their thirsty souls, and Zora held her beating breastday by day lest it rain too long or too heavily. The sun burned fiercelyupon the young cotton plants as the spring hastened, and they liftedtheir heads in darker, wilder luxuriance; for the time of hoeing was athand.
These days were days of alternate hope and doubt with Bles Alwyn.Strength and ambition and inarticulate love were fighting within him. Hefelt, in the dark thousands of his kind about him, a mighty calling todeeds. He was becoming conscious of the narrowness and straightness ofhis black world, and red anger flashed in him ever and again as he felthis bonds. His mental horizon was broadening as he prepared for thecollege of next year; he was faintly grasping the wider, fuller world,and its thoughts and aspirations.
But beside and around and above all this, like subtle, permeating ether,was--Zora. His feelings for her were not as yet definite, expressed, orgrasped; they were rather the atmosphere in which all things occurredand were felt and judged. From an amusing pastime she had come to be acompanion and thought-mate; and now, beyond this, insensibly they weredrifting to a silenter, mightier mingling of souls. But drifting,merely--not arrived; going gently, irresistibly, but not yet at therealized goal.
He felt all this as the stirring of a mighty force, but knew not whathe felt. The teasing of his fellows, the common love-gossip of theschool yard, seemed far different from his plight. He laughed at it andindignantly denied it. Yet he was uncomfortable, restless, unhappy. Hefancied Zora cared less for his company, and he gave her less, and thenwas puzzled to find time hanging so empty, so wretchedly empty, on hishands. When they were together in these days they found less to talkabout, and had it not been for the Silver Fleece which in magicwilfulness opened both their mouths, they would have found theircompanionship little more than a series of awkward silences. Yet intheir silences, their walks, and their sittings there was acompanionship, a glow, a satisfaction, as came to them nowhere else onearth, and they wondered at it.
They were both wondering at it this morning as they watched theircotton. It had seemingly bounded forward in a night and it must be hoedforthwith. Yet, hoeing was murder--the ruthless cutting away of tendererplants that the sturdier might thrive the more and grow.
"I hate it, Bles, don't you?"
"Hate what?"
"Killing any of it; it's all so pretty."
"But it must be, so that what's left will be prettier, or at least moreuseful."
"But it shouldn't be so; everything ought to have a chance to bebeautiful and useful."
"Perhaps it ought to be so," admitted Bles, "but it isn't."
"Isn't it so--anywhere?"
"I reckon not. Death and pain pay for all good things."
She hoed away silently, hesitating over the choice of the plants,pondering this world-old truth, saddened by its ruthless cruelty.
"Death and pain," she murmured; "what a price!"
Bles leaned on his hoe and considered. It had not occurred to him tillnow that Zora was speaking better and better English: the idioms anderrors were dropping away; they had not utterly departed, however, butcame crowding back in moments of excitement. At other times she clothedMiss Smith's clear-cut, correct speech in softer Southern accents. Shewas drifting away from him in some intangible way to an upper world ofdress and language and deportment, and the new thought was pain to him.
So it was that the Fleece rose and spread and grew to its wonderfulflowering; and so these two children grew with it into theirs. Zoranever forgot how they found the first white flower in that green andbillowing sea, nor her low cry of pleasure and his gay shout of joy.Slowly, wonderfully the flowers spread--white, blue, and purple bells,hiding timidly, blazing luxuriantly amid the velvet leaves; until oneday--it was after a southern rain and the sunlight was twinkling throughthe morning--all the Fleece was in flower--a mighty swaying sea,darkling rich and waving, and upon it flecks and stars of white andpurple foam. The joy of the two so madly craved expression that theyburst into singing; not the wild light song of dancing feet, but a low,sweet melody of her fathers' fathers, whereunto Alwyn's own deep voicefell fitly in minor cadence.
Miss Smith and Miss Taylor, who were sorting the mail, heard themsinging as they came up out of the swamp. Miss Taylor looked at them,then at Miss Smith.
But Miss Smith sat white and rigid with the first opened letter in herhand.