One thing alone lay in her wild fancy like a great and wonderful fact dragging the dream to earth and anchoring it there. That was the Silver Fleece. Like a brooding mother, Zora had watched it. She knew how the gin had been cleaned for its pressing and how it had been baled apart and carefully covered. She knew how proud Colonel Cresswell was of it and how daily he had visitors to see it and finger the wide white wound in its side.
“Yes, sir, grown on my place, by my niggers, sir!” he assured them; and they marvelled.
To Zora‚Äôs mind, this beautiful baled fibre was hers; it typified happiness; it was an holy thing which profane hands had stolen. When it came back to her (as come it must, she cried with clenched hands) it would bring happiness; not the great Happiness‚ÅÝ‚Äîthat was gone forever‚ÅÝ‚Äîbut illumination, atonement, and something of the power and the glory. So, involuntarily almost, she haunted the cotton storehouse, flitting like a dark and silent ghost in among the workmen, greeting them with her low musical voice, warding them with the cold majesty of her eyes; each day afraid of some last parting, each night triumphant‚ÅÝ‚Äîit was still there!
The Colonel‚ÅÝ‚ÄîZora already forgotten‚ÅÝ‚Äîrode up to the Cresswell Oaks, pondering darkly. It was bad enough to contemplate Helen‚Äôs marriage in distant prospect, but the sudden, almost peremptory desire for marrying at Eastertide, a little less than two months away, was absurd. There were ‚Äúbusiness reasons arising from the presidential campaign in the fall,‚Äù John Taylor had telegraphed; but there was already too much business in the arrangement to suit the Colonel. With Harry it was different. Indeed it was his own quiet suggestion that made John Taylor hurry matters.
Harry trusted to the novelty of his father’s new wealth to make the latter complacent; he himself felt an impatient longing for the haven of a