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Updated: June 23, 2025
Maxwell's cherished dream was a pillared mansion like the Cresswells'. Mr. Tolliver looked at his house and barns. "Well, daughter, if this crop sells at twelve cents, I'll be on my feet again, and I won't have to sell that land to the nigger school after all. Once out of the clutch of the Cresswells well, I think we can have a coat of paint." And he laughed as he had not laughed in ten years.
"About darky schools?" "Yes." "What does she intend to do?" "I think she will aid Miss Smith first." "Did you suggest anything?" "Well, I told her what I thought about coöperating with the local white people." "The Cresswells?" "Yes you see Mrs. Vanderpool knows the Cresswells." "Does, eh? Good! Say, that's a good point. You just bear heavy on it coöperate with the Cresswells." "Why, yes.
In the gathering twilight they marched noisily through the streets; in their midst, wide-eyed and laughing almost hysterically, marched Zora. Mrs. Vanderpool meantime rode thoughtfully out of town toward Cresswell Oaks. She was returning from witnessing the Mardi Gras festivities at New Orleans and at the urgent invitation of the Cresswells had stopped off.
"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.
Then she answered the query herself: "No, of course you could not. It is too bad that your work deprives you of the society of people of your class. Now my ideal is a set of Negro schools where the white teachers could know the Cresswells." "Why, yes " faltered Miss Taylor; "but wouldn't that be difficult?" "Why should it be?" "I mean, would the Cresswells approve of educating Negroes?"
The dashing young Miss Easterly was more to his taste. He intended to have a wife like that one of these days. "Mary," said he to his sister as he finally rose to go, "tell me about the Cresswells." Mary explained to him at length the impossibility of her knowing much about the local white aristocracy of Tooms County, and then told him all she had heard. "Mrs. Grey talked to you much?" "Yes."
She discovered that this young woman knew things, that she could talk books, and that she was rather pretty. To be sure she knew no people, but Mrs. Vanderpool knew enough to even things. "By the bye, I met some charming Alabama people last winter, in Montgomery the Cresswells; do you know them?" she asked one day, as they were lounging in wicker chairs on the Vanderpool porch.
At present four Southern votes were needed to confirm Vanderpool; but if they could not be had, Easterly declared it would be good politics to nominate Cresswell and give him Republican support. Manifestly, then, Mrs. Vanderpool's task was to discredit the Cresswells with the Southerners. It was not a work to her liking, but the die was cast and she refused to contemplate defeat.
Mary Taylor was beside herself with impatient anger and anger intensified by a conviction of utter helplessness to cope with any strained or unusual situations between herself and these two. "Alwyn," she said sharply, "I shall report Zora for stealing. And you may report yourself to Miss Smith tonight for disrespect toward a teacher." Eight The Cresswells, father and son, were at breakfast.
"Oh, yaas, yaas, ma'am, dey was careful of de're niggers and wouldn't let de drivers whip 'em much." "And these Cresswells today?" "Oh, dey're quality high-blooded folks dey'se lost some land and niggers, but, lordy, nuttin' can buy de Cresswells, dey naturally owns de world." "Are they honest and kind?" "Oh, yaas, ma'am dey'se good white folks." "Good white folk?"
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