The Quest of the Silver Fleece | Page 6

it with disdainful ease.
"What's the mere color of a human soul's skin," she had cried to a
Wellesley audience and the audience had applauded with enthusiasm.
But here in Alabama, brought closely and intimately in touch with
these dark skinned children, their color struck her at first with a sort of
terror--it seemed ominous and forbidding. She found herself shrinking
away and gripping herself lest they should perceive. She could not help
but think that in most other things they were as different from her as in
color. She groped for new ways to teach colored brains and marshal
colored thoughts and the result was puzzling both to teacher and
student. With the other teachers she had little commerce. They were in
no sense her sort of folk. Miss Smith represented the older New
England of her parents--honest, inscrutable, determined, with a
conscience which she worshipped, and utterly unselfish. She appealed
to Miss Taylor's ruddier and daintier vision but dimly and distantly as
some memory of the past. The other teachers were indistinct
personalities, always very busy and very tired, and talking

"school-room" with their meals. 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 anæmic; 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."