The Quest of the Silver Fleece | Page 6

Miss Taylor was soon starving for human companionship, for the lighter touches of life and some of its warmth and laughter. She wanted a glance of the new books and periodicals and talk of great philanthropies and reforms. She felt out of the world, shut in and mentally an?mic; great as the "Negro Problem" might be as a world problem, it looked sordid and small at close range. So for the hundredth time she was thinking today, as she walked alone up the lane back of the barn, and then slowly down through the bottoms. She paused a moment and nodded to the two boys at work in a young cotton field.
"Cotton!"
She paused. She remembered with what interest she had always read of this little thread of the world. She had almost forgotten that it was here within touch and sight. For a moment something of the vision of Cotton was mirrored in her mind. The glimmering sea of delicate leaves whispered and murmured before her, stretching away to the Northward. She remembered that beyond this little world it stretched on and on--how far she did not know--but on and on in a great trembling sea, and the foam of its mighty waters would one time flood the ends of the earth.
She glimpsed all this with parted lips, and then sighed impatiently. There might be a bit of poetry here and there, but most of this place was such desperate prose.
She glanced absently at the boys.
One was Bles Alwyn, a tall black lad. (Bles, she mused,--now who would think of naming a boy "Blessed," save these incomprehensible creatures!) Her regard shifted to the green stalks and leaves again, and she started to move away. Then her New England conscience stepped in. She ought not to pass these students without a word of encouragement or instruction.
"Cotton is a wonderful thing, is it not, boys?" she said rather primly. The boys touched their hats and murmured something indistinctly. Miss Taylor did not know much about cotton, but at least one more remark seemed called for.
"How long before the stalks will be ready to cut?" she asked carelessly. The farther boy coughed and Bles raised his eyes and looked at her; then after a pause he answered slowly. (Oh! these people were so slow--now a New England boy would have answered and asked a half-dozen questions in the time.)
"I--I don't know," he faltered.
"Don't know! Well, of all things!" inwardly commented Miss Taylor--"literally born in cotton, and--Oh, well," as much as to ask, "What's the use?" She turned again to go.
"What is planted over there?" she asked, although she really didn't care.
"Goobers," answered the smaller boy.
"Goobers?" uncomprehendingly.
"Peanuts," Bles specified.
"Oh!" murmured Miss Taylor. "I see there are none on the vines yet. I suppose, though, it's too early for them."
Then came the explosion. The smaller boy just snorted with irrepressible laughter and bolted across the fields. And Bles--was Miss Taylor deceived?--or was he chuckling? She reddened, drew herself up, and then, dropping her primness, rippled with laughter.
"What is the matter, Bles?" she asked.
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.
"Of course, it isn't--I don't know anything about farming. But what did I say so funny?"
Bles was now laughing outright.
"Why, Miss Taylor! I declare! Goobers don't grow on the tops of vines, but underground on the roots--like yams."
"Is that so?"
"Yes, and we--we don't pick cotton stalks except for kindling."
"I must have been thinking of hemp. But tell me more about cotton."
His eyes lighted, for cotton was to him a very real and beautiful thing, and a life-long companion, yet not one whose friendship had been coarsened and killed by heavy toil. He leaned against his hoe and talked half dreamily--where had he learned so well that dream-talk?
"We turn up the earth and sow it soon after Christmas. Then pretty soon there comes a sort of greenness on the black land and it swells and grows and, and--shivers. Then stalks shoot up with three or four leaves. That's the way it is now, see? After that we chop out the weak stalks, and the strong ones grow tall and dark, till I think it must be like the ocean--all green and billowy; then come little flecks here and there and the sea is all filled with flowers--flowers like little bells, blue and purple and white."
"Ah! that must be beautiful," sighed Miss Taylor, wistfully, sinking to the ground and clasping her hands about her knees.
"Yes, ma'am. But it's prettiest when the bolls come and swell and burst, and the cotton covers the field like foam, all misty--"
She bent wondering over the pale plants. The poetry of the thing began