The Quest of the Silver Fleece | Page 8

when
Miss Taylor, weary with the day's work, climbed into the buggy beside
Bles. They wheeled comfortably down the road, leaving the sombre
swamp, with its black-green, to the right, and heading toward the

golden-green of waving cotton fields. Miss Taylor lay back, listlessly,
and drank the soft warm air of the languorous Spring. She thought of
the golden sheen of the cotton, and the cold March winds of New
England; of her brother who apparently noted nothing of leaves and
winds and seasons; and of the mighty Cresswells whom Miss Smith so
evidently disliked. Suddenly she became aware of her long silence and
the silence of the boy.
"Bles," she began didactically, "where are you from?"
He glanced across at her and answered shortly:
"Georgia, ma'am," and was silent.
The girl tried again.
"Georgia is a large State,"--tentatively.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Are you going back there when you finish?"
"I don't know."
"I think you ought to--and work for your people."
"Yes, ma'am."
She stopped, puzzled, and looked about. The old horse jogged lazily on,
and Bles switched him unavailingly. Somehow she had missed the way
today. The Veil hung thick, sombre, impenetrable. Well, she had done
her duty, and slowly she nestled back and watched the far-off green and
golden radiance of the cotton.
"Bles," she said impulsively, "shall I tell you of the Golden Fleece?"
He glanced at her again.
"Yes'm, please," he said.

She settled herself almost luxuriously, and began the story of Jason and
the Argonauts.
The boy remained silent. And when she had finished, he still sat silent,
elbow on knee, absently flicking the jogging horse and staring ahead at
the horizon. She looked at him doubtfully with some disappointment
that his hearing had apparently shared so little of the joy of her telling;
and, too, there was mingled a vague sense of having lowered herself to
too familiar fellowship with this--this boy. She straightened herself
instinctively and thought of some remark that would restore proper
relations. She had not found it before he said, slowly:
"All yon is Jason's."
"What?" she asked, puzzled.
He pointed with one sweep of his long arm to the quivering mass of
green-gold foliage that swept from swamp to horizon.
"All yon golden fleece is Jason's now," he repeated.
"I thought it was--Cresswell's," she said.
"That's what I mean."
She suddenly understood that the story had sunk deeply.
"I am glad to hear you say that," she said methodically, "for Jason was
a brave adventurer--"
"I thought he was a thief."
"Oh, well--those were other times."
"The Cresswells are thieves now."
Miss Taylor answered sharply.
"Bles, I am ashamed to hear you talk so of your neighbors simply

because they are white."
But Bles continued.
"This is the Black Sea," he said, pointing to the dull cabins that
crouched here and there upon the earth, with the dark twinkling of their
black folk darting out to see the strangers ride by.
Despite herself Miss Taylor caught the allegory and half whispered,
"Lo! the King himself!" as a black man almost rose from the tangled
earth at their side. He was tall and thin and sombre-hued, with a carven
face and thick gray hair.
"Your servant, mistress," he said, with a sweeping bow as he strode
toward the swamp. Miss Taylor stopped him, for he looked interesting,
and might answer some of her brother's questions. He turned back and
stood regarding her with sorrowful eyes and ugly mouth.
"Do you live about here?" she asked.
"I'se lived here a hundred years," he answered. She did not believe it;
he might be seventy, eighty, or even ninety--indeed, there was about
him that indefinable sense of age--some shadow of endless living; but a
hundred seemed absurd.
"You know the people pretty well, then?"
"I knows dem all. I knows most of 'em better dan dey knows demselves.
I knows a heap of tings in dis world and in de next."
"This is a great cotton country?"
"Dey don't raise no cotton now to what dey used to when old Gen'rel
Cresswell fust come from Carolina; den it was a bale and a half to the
acre on stalks dat looked like young brushwood. Dat was cotton."
"You know the Cresswells, then?"
"Know dem? I knowed dem afore dey was born."

"They are--wealthy people?"
"Dey rolls in money and dey'se quality, too. No shoddy upstarts dem,
but born to purple, lady, born to purple. Old Gen'ral Cresswell had
niggers and acres no end back dere in Carolina. He brung a part of dem
here and here his son, de father of dis Colonel Cresswell, was born. De
son--I knowed him well--he had a tousand niggers and ten tousand
acres afore de war."
"Were they kind to their slaves?"
"Oh, yaas, yaas, ma'am, dey was careful of de're