Thefloor of the summer-house at Uncle Carter's was of lovely white sand, and did not soil my clean pink gingham frock, although I sat down flat upon it. Under one of the three benches that furnished it, I had dug a vault yesterday. It was modelled upon the description given inThe Fairchild Familyof one belonging to a nobleman's estate. My self-education was essentially Squeersian. When I read a thing, I forthwith went and did it. The gardener had lent me a trowel, and I had found a thin, flat stone that served as a cover. Digging was easy work in the top-dressing of sand and the substratum of loose, dry soil.
There were eight niches in the vault—two on a side. When all was finished, I sallied forth in quest of occupants. My vault was stocked by nightfall. In one niche was a dead sparrow my cousin Burwell had shot by mistake and thrown away. In a second was a frog on which a horse or cow had trod, crippling it so badly that Uncle Carter mercifully killed it with a blow of his stick. The poultry-yard and an epidemic of pip supplied me with two more silent tenants. A mouse-trap strangled a fifth, the gardener's mole-trap yielded up a sixth. Nos. 7 and 8 were land-terrapins ("tar'pens," in negro dialect), which I knew must be dead when I found them, although I could discern no sign of violence. Their shells were shut so tightly that I could not force a straw between the upper and lower, and no amount of kicking and thumping elicited any sign of life.
An innovation upon the Fairchild pattern was the deposit in the bottom of the vault of a tumbler full of flies which Aunt Elizatold the dining room servant to throw into the kitchen fire. A primitive snare for these destroyers of the housewife's peace was made by filling a tumbler within an inch of the brim with strong soap-suds, and fitting upon the top a round cover of thick "sugar-loaf paper," with a hole in the middle. Molasses was smeared all around this hole upon the under side of the paper, and an alluring drop or two on the top attracted attention to the larger supply of sweets. At least a quart of flies, per day, were caught in this way in the height of the season before window and door screens were invented.
I waylaid the man and tumbler in the back porch.
"Are they dead, sure enough?" I whispered.
"Dead as a door-nail, little mistis."
"Give 'em to me, please! I'll bury them."
He complied, good-naturedly. I poured the contents of the glass into the vault, and strewed fine dry sand over them an inch deep. Then I fitted on the flat stone, andsaid nothing to anybody of my new branch of industry.
I was tired of being called "an old-fashioned child!" My mother's oft and resigned ejaculation—"Whatnext, I wonder!" was to my ears a covert reproach for not being "steady" and "a comfort," like Mary 'Liza. Even my less critical father's shout of laughter at any unusual freak or experiment abraded my moral cuticle sometimes. At home the colored children would have entered heartily into my mortuary enterprise,—yes! and kept my counsel. The reticence of the serf exceeds in dumb doggedness that of a misunderstood child. But I did not play with Uncle Carter's little negroes. Every Southern child comprehended the distinction between "home-folks" and other people's servants.
Not that I was ever lonely. What I called "things" were an unfailing resource to me. An ant-hill was entertainment for a whole forenoon; I watched bees and their hivesby the hour; my vault kept me busy and happy all day. If Cousin Molly Belle suspected what I was about, she asked no questions, and refrained from spying upon me. When dressed clean in the afternoon, for the second time since breakfast,—the manufacture of mud-pies, puddings, and cakes, and the baking of several batches in the sun, having engrossed the morning,—I tookThe Fairchild Familyout into the summer-house and reread, for the tenth time, the account of the opening of the family vault.
Why, I reasoned within myself, should innocent dumb creatures be thrown away like dead leaves, when they have stopped living? It would be kind in me, or in anybody, to bury them in vaults, and to write Bible verses and all that on their tombstones. I would dig another vault to-morrow and look around for things to put into it,—and still another the next day. I had, in imagination, honeycombed the space under the benches with catacombs, and my book was clean forgotten, before I saw a movement in the sandy flooring, close to the edge of the flat stone sealing the mouth of the vault. I leaned forward to inspect it more nearly. The stone had been undermined at one side, and a hole left there, through which a line of flies, gray with dust, was feebly crawling into the sunshine. There seemed to be a thousand of them, all dusty, but some more active than others. As soon as they were quite clear of the hole, they dispersed in various directions, some alighting upon twigs and blades of grass, some flying up to the benches, where they sat cleaning their bodies and wings with their feet and mouths.
I worked my hands into the hole and raised the stone. A cloud of resurrected flies arose in my astonished face. The vault was quick with them. The dry sand, warmed by the sun, that I had sifted over them, had acted as a hot blanket upon the chilled body of a dying man. When I got rid of the swarm I examined the vault. Both ofthe terrapins were missing. The sapping and mining was their work. Through the tunnel thus excavated they had regained their liberty, and released a mighty host of fellow-captives.
"The rest of you aredead, anyhow!" said I, aloud, intensely chagrined at the cheat practised upon my benevolent nature, and I shoved the stone back over the violated vault.
A shadow fell upon the white sand. Looking up, I saw a young gentleman in the door of the summer-house, smiling down at me. At the first glance I took him for my cousin Burwell, who was at home on his vacation. A second undeceived me. I scrambled to my feet and stared hard at the stranger who stood with his hands behind him, still smiling, but not saying a word. He was nattily dressed in a blue cloth coat and trousers, and a white waistcoat. A white satin stock of the latest style encircled a slender neck; he wore shiny boots, a leghorn hat was set jauntily above a crop of black curls. I was never shy, having been accustomed from my birth to meeting strangers and to "entertaining company" when called upon to do so. Yet I was strangely embarrassed by the merry eyes fixed silently upon me.
"How do you do, sir!" I said, dropping a little courtesy, as well-bred children still did in that part of the civilized world.
Still without speaking, the stranger drew nearer and stooped to kiss me. This was going several steps too far. I clapped one hand over my mouth and pushed him away with the other.
"Cousin Molly Belle!oh, Cousin Molly Belle!" I screamed between my fingers.
She was the only member of the family at home, my uncle, aunt, and their two sons having gone on an all-day visit to a plantation some miles away.
"Why, Namesake! don't you know me?"
Her voice answered in my very ear, her arm held me as I ceased struggling.
I laughed like a mad thing in the excess of my relief and surprise, and when she sat down, I climbed to her knee for a good look at her disguise.
"Cousin Burwell's clothes!" I said analytically. "And his hat. But your hair is black."
She lifted the hat to show that she had on a black wig.
"It belonged to poor Grandpapa when he was young. He had a fever and his head was shaved. I found it in a box on the top shelf of mother's closet, and tried it on just for fun. I liked myself so well in the glass that I thought I'd see how I would have looked if Burwell had been the girl, and I the boy. I know now that I ought to have been. I mean to be—just for fun—until they all come home. I'm in exactly the humor to do something outrageous. I'm tired to death of everyday doings and everyday people, and my everyday self. You and I are going to have a real spree,a glorious frolic, and nobody else is to know a single thing about it. Flora" (her maid) "helped me on with this rig. She is as close as wax, and you never tell tales,—Oh, yes! I know—" as I opened my mouth eagerly—"you would have your tongue pulled out by the roots before you would get me into trouble. And there would be all sorts of trouble if I were found out."
She tied my sunbonnet, made of the same pink gingham as my frock, under my chin, and we set forward gleefully upon our spree. To begin with, we jumped over the yard palings, so that we should not have to pass in sight of the house and kitchen, in order to get into the lane leading to the public road. We called it "a lane." Now it would be an avenue, or drive. The finest Lombardy poplars in Powhatan County bordered it; sheep mint, pennyroyal, sweetbrier, and wild thyme grew up close to the wheel-track and gave out a goodly smell as we brushed by and trod upon them. I was in a high galeof spirits, and prattled as fast as my tongue could run, flattered beyond expression by the choice of myself as an accomplice in the frolic.
"It's a pity youcan'tchange places with Cousin Burwell!" I regretted. "You'd be a heap handsomer gentleman than he is. And it must be just fine not to have to hold up your frocks when you want to run fast, and to climb trees and jump fences. Would it be sure-enough wrong—I don't mean not lady-like—but would it besinfulfor you to dress that way all the time?"
"People seem to think so, Namesake. They think so so much that it is against the law for a woman to wear a man's clothes, or for a man to wear a woman's. Though why any man with a grain of sense in his head should ever want to put onskirts, I can't see. If I were to meet a magistrate while I have on these—things,"—flicking her trousers with a switch she had cut from a hickory sapling,—"he would have a right to put me in jail."
"Oh, Cousin Molly Belle!" squeezing her hand hard. "S'pose we should!"
"I'm Cousin Burwell until we get home. No 's'pose,' you little goosie! If we did, we'd take to the woods, and outrun him. Or, we'd climb a tree."
We were in the highroad, striding the ruts and skipping over stones like two boys on the way home from school. There was pleasanter walking in bridle-paths and wood-roads branching off from the thoroughfare every few rods. I think the madcap chose the rutty and mud-holey route because there was, at least, a chance that we might have to plunge into the bushes to hide, or to brave the scrutiny of strangers and acquaintances. The sauce of danger made the escapade the more attractive.
Half a mile from home a creek, shallow, but broad, crossed the road. We could not pass over dry-shod and had to go up the bank into the low grounds to find a long log laid from side to side of a narrower partof the stream. My companion hoisted me upon her back and ran along the uncertain bridge as fleetly as a squirrel.
"How far are we going?" I asked, as she set me down.
"Around by Tom's Hill, and then cut across the field home. It's more than a mile. Can you walk so far?"
"I walked two miles at a time, once!" I boasted.
"You are a brave little lightwood knot!"
She was "fey"—exaltée—in the state of lighthearted-and lightheadedness for which sober, literal, decorous English has no synonym. As we went, she danced and sang, and laughed out joyously at everything and at nothing, and talked the most fascinating nonsense—all in the rôle of "Cousin Burwell." She could imitate him to perfection; her strut and swagger and slang threw me into paroxysms of delight. We picked huckleberries, and dived into the woods to feast upon wild plums that had ten drops ofsyrupy juice between tough skins and flinty stones encased in the pulp of bitterness, and gathered handfuls of wild flowers because their beauty tempted sight and touch, and with no intention of taking them home with us. Two of Pan's dryads turned loose for a holiday could not have sported more irrationally.
We met neither man nor beast until we had climbed Tom's Hill, a stony eminence from the top of which, as the neighbors were proud of saying, one could see six dwelling-houses, each with its group of outbuildings, representing six fine plantations. A saddle-horse was tied to a persimmon tree a hundred yards or so down the other side. He whinnied at sight of us, and Cousin Molly Belle ran up to him.
"Well done, Snap! old fellow! clothes don't make any difference to you—do they?"
It was Mr. Frank Morton's riding horse, and the fence by which he stood bounded anextensive tobacco field belonging to Mr. Frank Morton's brother. About the middle of the field was a tobacco barn, and by climbing upon the top rail of the fence so as to overlook a row of sassafras saplings, I could see a group of men about the door. Their backs were toward us, and if they had looked our way they could not have seen us, when I got down.
Cousin Molly Belle's eyes were two dancing stars. She clapped her hands in riotous glee. Without a word she untied the bridle from the tree, vaulted into the saddle, drew me up in front of her, and before I could put a question we were pacing briskly down the hill. At the bottom we struck into a cross-road leading to Uncle Carter's plantation. Cousin Molly Belle was laughing too heartily to speak distinctly, and I joined in with all my heart, with a very imperfect appreciation of the extent of the practical joke. Mr. Frank Morton would not have to walk home. He had only to go to his brother'shouse when he missed Snap and borrow a horse, and Snap would be sent back safely to him in good time.
"What d'you s'pose he'll say when he comes to the fence and Snap isn't there?" queried I, at length.
"Oh,don'tI wish I were hiding somewhere near enough to hear and see him!" another and yet more infectious outburst. "That would be the best part of the joke. I'm going to turn Snap loose when we get to our outer gate, and hit him a crack with my switch and start him toward home. He'll not tell tales out of school—will you, old boy?" slapping his neck affectionately. "Mr. Frank Morton will never guess why the horse thief let such a fine animal get away from him, when once he had got him. I can hear him now, telling me the story, and I'll look as grave as a dozen judges, and wonder as hard as he does—and—Hark!"
We were, perhaps, half a mile from the place where we had found Snap, but, as Ihave said, Tom's Hill was a stony ledge, running like a sharp backbone between fertile fields, and we heard from afar off the clattering hoofs of a horse pressed to his utmost speed.
"Heis after us!" exclaimed Cousin Molly Belle, and brought down her switch stingingly upon Snap's flanks.
Tightening her arm about me, she urged him from canter to gallop, from a gallop to a run. The trees swept by us like lightning; the wind tore the breath from our lungs, but I had no thought of fear. My cousin was a fearless rider, and the perfectly broken hunter under us flew as steadily and as straight as a blue martin. Against the back of my head Cousin Molly Belle's heart was pounding like an unbalanced trip-hammer. I wondered if it were possible that she was frightened, and twisted my face around to get a glimpse of hers. It was as white as a sheet, and her teeth were set hard upon her lower lip. Within a stone's throw of Uncle Carter's outer gate she brought the horse down to a walk, then to a full stop, and slipped to the ground. Her face was so pale and rigid as she set me upon my feet that I began to tremble.
"Are you scared?" I faltered.
"Scared to death, child! Hush!"
She turned Snap's head in the direction from which we had come, and struck him smartly with her switch, in letting go of the bridle.
"Go home, sir! Go!"
He galloped off, stirrups and mane flying, and she drew a deep, agitated breath.
"If ever I get into such a scrape again!"
She bent low and listened; the scared look settled again upon her face. Through the stillness of the summer afternoon, we hearda sharp "Whoa!" faint but clear, when, as we judged, Snap neared our pursuer. The pause of a second ensued, and the hoofs, doubled in number and resonance, sounded nearer and nearer, thundering over the soft ground, clicking against the stones, like a charge of cavalry. Cousin Molly Belle was so white that a few freckles, never seen through her usually brilliant ?>mn ion, made a line of sallow dots across her cheek bones and the bridge of her nose. Clutching me more roughly than she had ever touched me before, she thrust me well into the heart of a tall cedar whose lowest boughs grew out horizontally and swept the earth.
"Don't move or speak!" she whispered fiercely and forced her way to the hole of the tree.
I heard the grating of the bark under her feet, and felt the branches shake, then grow quiet. She was well up the tree, and hidden by the bushy foliage. The tumultuous beat of the charging hoofs echoed more and moreloudly. The rider would be upon us in another minute. Escape through the gate and down the avenue to the house was out of the question. We would have been in sight from the road for several hundred yards, and a few seconds would be lost in opening the gate.
On my part, the adventure was, thus far, pure fun, and the excitement delicious. I giggled in my sleeve in the anticipation of hearing the furious hoofs sweep past and lose themselves in the distance on the false scent. I had not had time to speculate as to why my companion was "scared to death."
The clatter was abreast of, and behind me in the road when the imperative "Whoa!" again arrested it. I knew the voice now. A man leaped to the ground; hasty footsteps struck across the turf edging the highway; dry sticks cracked, my bushy covert was jarred, and Mr. Frank Morton stood before me, parting the branches to get a good look at me. My pink gingham had betrayed me.
"Molly Burwell! what are you doing here?"
As if prompted by a telepathic despatch from the fugitive overhead, I began to pick the bluish white berries studding the twigs and to cram them into my mouth.
"Picking cedar-berries!" I retorted coolly, cocking a saucy eye at him.
"Who came with you?"
I stood on tiptoe to tug at a fat cedar-ball, glossy, brown, and deeply pitted.
"Oh, Mr. Frank! won't you please cut it off for me?"
He whipped out his knife and severed the twig.
"Did you come all the way from the house alone?"
I had never, within my memory, told a deliberate lie. My cheeks burned like fire; my eyes dropped guiltily. My tongue did not trip or tangle.
"Yes, sir."
There was a dread silence. My ears rang, my heart was sinking slowly and sickeningly into my heels. I had bethought myself justas he put the question, that Cousin Molly Belle might be put in jail if he found out that she had been with me, and had on her brother's clothes. As a well-tutored child in a Presbyterian family, I knew what becomes of liars when they leave off living and lying together. My teeth ceased to chatter and met with a snap. The loyal heart rallied to the help of the guilty tongue. I raised my eyes in sullen defiance.
"It isn't sodreadfulfar! I came all by my loney-toney self!"
My friend laughed.
"My dear little girl, there is no great harm in that. Only, I wouldn't run away again if I were you. Your aunt might be uneasy if she missed you."
"She isn't at home," I answered incautiously. "She 'n' Uncle Carter 'n' Cousin Burwell 'n' Cousin Dick have gone to Mr. Cunningham's."
"Ah!" The ejaculation was not regretful. "Isn't Miss Molly Belle at home?You would be sorry to makeheranxious, I know."
The cedar-branches thrilled slightly, as at the flight of a startled bird. Mr. Frank did not notice it, but the movement nerved me. I spoke hastily, walking away from the tree toward the gate.
"Oh, yes,she'sat home! I reckon she must have been taking a nap when I came away. I'm going right back now."
I had never dreamed that lying was such an easy performance.
"I'll take you home. Wait a minute!"
Snap was grazing on the roadside. Another saddle-horse stood by with drooping head, his bridle hanging loosely in the bend of Mr. Frank's arm. I was lifted to Snap's back; my escort walked beside me through the gate, and along the lane, one hand on me, and leading the second horse.
"I suppose you are wondering what I am doing with two horses," he said lightly. "It is a very funny story. I'll tell you andMiss Molly Belle when we get to the house. It will make you both laugh."
He had given me Snap's bridle to hold, as if I were riding all by myself. He thought it would please me. In other circumstances I should have been glad and proud to be so mounted, and by him. But from my lofty seat I could see over his head across the field of corn which lay to the left of the road. Something or somebody was running between the close rows in a straight line from the plantation gate to the house. Running like a deer, or a greyhound—or Cousin Molly Belle. She must get home and up to her room before we got there.
"Oh, Mr. Frank!" I cried. "I have dropped my cedar-ball!" And when he had picked it up, "Won't you please make Snap walk very slow? I am afraid I might fall off."
"What has got into you to-day, little Duchess?" He had a dozen pet names for me, and my heart smote me sore at sight ofhis kind, honest face. "It isn't like you to be afraid of horses,—and you and Snap are old friends. You will never be such a rider as Miss Molly Belle if you learn to be nervous."
Not another sound fell from my lips until I was put down gently at the front gate of my uncle's house, and Flora bustled out, cross lines in her forehead and cross tones in her voice.
"I do declar', Miss Molly—(How-you-do, Mars' Frank?) I do declar', Miss Molly, you're enough to drive anybody crazy with you' wild tomboy ways. Me 'n' Miss Molly Belle, we've been jes' raisin' the plantation fo' you, and hyar you come home a-riding Mars' Frank Mo'ton's horse, gran' as you please, and nobody knowin' whar you been ever sence dinner-time. Miss Molly Belle 'll be mighty obleeged to you for fotchin' of her home, Mars' Frank. She'll be down pretty soon for to tell you so herself. Walk into the parlor, please, sir. Jim, you takeMr. Mo'ton's horses to the stable. And Miss Molly, you jes' stay thar 'n' ent'tain Mr. Mo'ton like a little lady tell you' cousin comes down sta'rs."
The End of the Prank. "I was put down at my uncle's house, and Flora bustled out."The End of the Prank. "I was put down at my uncle's house, and Flora bustled out."
I obeyed with docility that must have surprised the autocrat. Meek and miserable, I preceded the guest to the parlor, although every minute spent under his unsuspecting eyes was a danger and a pain. I made no attempt to "entertain him." Seated upon a high chair, my feet swinging dolefully six inches above the floor, I fingered the wretched cedar-ball, redolent of rosin through much bruising, my pink sunbonnet hanging from the knotted strings to the small of my back, and with difficulty refrained from crying. I had never been wretched just in that way before. Two imperative duties had met plump and face to face, with a shock that jarred all preconceived principles of belief and action out of plumb. Cousin Molly Belle had trusted me to keep her secret, and I saw no way of doing it except to lie outright and repeatedly.The sin lashed my conscience until I could have located in my corporeal frame the exact whereabouts of the uncomfortable possession. So absorbed was I by individual upbraidings that Flora's barefaced fabrication of the search her young mistress and she had had for the runaway passed unrebuked by so much as a look. It was no comfort to me to hear another person lie even more glibly than myself. Flora was an ignorant colored person, I, a baptized white child of the covenant who could read the Bible for herself.
Mr. Morton tried to make me talk by well-concerted questions. Children are best approached through the interrogative mood. It offers just so many nails set in a sure place upon which to hang conversation. He was a handsome, well-set-up young fellow, and, if somewhat graver by nature and habit than most of Cousin Molly Belle's beaux, suited my taste best of them all. Yesterday I should have been tickled clean out of the proprieties by the chance of talking to him all by myselffor twenty minutes, sitting up in Aunt Eliza's parlor, just like grown folks.
The twenty minutes were like one hundred in sloth and weight before the tap of high heels on the oaken stairs and the swish of skirts against the banisters advised us who was coming.
She walked into the room with her head high and chin level; her eyes shone and her coloring was superb. She had never been more beautiful, and never so dignified. Her admirer felt both of these facts, and was moved to mute inquiry into the cause of the singular mood. His glowing eyes questioned hers while she shook hands with him and then sat down, and held out her hand silently to me, without a smile. I went as straight to her as a wounded bird to shelter, dropped upon a stool beside her and rested my cheek against her knee, my hand in a grasp that was close and loving, and—or so I fancied—monitory. My heart retorted upon writhing conscience that she was worth sinning for. I added,dogged and desperate, that I would do it again, if she needed to have it done.
"Flora says that you have been very uneasy about this little lady," said Mr. Frank, the dumb questioning still in his eyes, while he led the talk into safer paths. "And that you have been hunting for her all over the plantation."
"Flora said what was not true. I knew where she was, and did not look for her at all or anywhere."
The metallic quality in her voice did not belong to it, and her articulation was carefully clear, not at all like the gliding vowels and consonantal elisions that help make musical the speech of the Southern girl.
Mr. Frank looked puzzled. Had I not been present, he would have got at the answer to the enigma. I felt this, but my hand was still in Cousin Molly's, and I comprehended that she willed me to stay where I was.
"I have had an adventure, if she has not," resumed Mr. Frank, merrily. "You mayhave seen me arrive with two saddle-horses? I was on my way here, riding Snap. As I passed John's upper tobacco-field, I saw him at the barn. So I tied Snap to a tree and went to speak to John. While we were talking a negro ran up, all out of breath, to say that a man and a woman had stolen my horse. The negro was too far off to recognize the fellow, but he saw him untie Snap, mount him, help a little woman in a red dress to get up behind him, and then ride away at a rattling pace. Fortunately, John's riding-horse was standing at the barn door. I was in the saddle before the story was done, put him at the nearest fence, and was after the thieves. I must have gained upon them—Wildfire can outrun any other horse in the county, and I did not spare him—for the rascals left their booty and got away with whole skins. I met Snap just this side of Willis's Creek, going home like the sensible creature he is. He had been ridden hard, and there were welts on his sides where he had been whipped, but Igot him back safe. It was a risky thing—their stealing him. Everybody about here knows the star in his forehead and his white hind foot. The first white man that met the thieves would have taken them up. I have no doubt that they belonged to a gang of gypsies that are roaming through this neighborhood. A wagon-load of them passed our house yesterday and camped last night at the Crossroads. I saw them there last night as I went home from Court. On my way back this evening I'll give them a call and let them understand that this is an unhealthy country for that sort of gentry. Horse-thieves and grapevines are found conveniently near to one another, sometimes."
In the horror of the hearing, I must have cried out but for the warning squeeze that made my finger-joints slip upon each other and the bones ache. The muscles of my face stiffened until I felt it losing all resemblance to Molly Burwell. I was sure that it looked like a gray old woman's, and instinctivelyturned it into the folds of my cousin's skirt. Suppose Mr. Frank had called upon the gypsies before coming here! If he had not come to us at all to-day—what would have happened? Would he have had the innocent strangers hanged upon the convenient grapevine? Could he be prevented from doing this now unless the truth were told him?That, of course, was not to be thought of. Better have the gypsy gang driven out of the county and a man and a woman strung up, than let Cousin Molly Belle go to jail for wearing men's clothes. She would die sooner than confess to any man, least of all to this one, that she had worn—pantaloons!—and ridden Snap as people who wear the things always ride.
How little I knew her was to be proved.
She let go my fingers all at once, pressed her palms together hard, and sat up very straight, settling her eyes upon Mr. Frank's. When she spoke, the metallic ring was that of a taut piano-string.
"You will please not go near the gypsies.Istole your horse. Just for fun, you know. And wretched fun it was. I saw him standing there, and the temptation to play a trick upon you was too much for me. I meant to let him go and send him back when I got to our gate. I did it sooner than I expected, because I heard you coming and knew in a minute that you must be on Wildfire, and that Snap stood no chance of keeping ahead of him."
The listener's face was a study. He stood up and stared down at her, at first in incredulous stupefaction, then, frowningly.
"You—took—my—horse!You were that 'little woman,' then? Who was the man?"
"There was no man. The negro did not see straight, or he told you a lie. Molly was with me, and, as you see, her frock is pink. We were out walking. We both got on the horse. It was a silly, silly prank, and all my fault."
The frown disappeared; the perplexityremained. He glanced at me, and my eyes fell. I so wanted Mr. Frank Morton to think well of me!
"But Molly said—" he began.
She took him up quickly.
"I know what Molly said. I was close by and heard every word. She was trying to shield me. I told her that I could be put in jail if anybody knew what I had done. I tempted the poor, loyal, loving little soul to tell the first falsehood that ever soiled her tongue. It was a wicked—a vile—ameanthing in me! I loathe myself when I think of it. Oh, Namesake!"—encircling me suddenly with her arm—"we will ask God together to forgive us. I am the sinner—not you!"
I was wetting her sleeve with tears, shed more for her distress than for my sin.
Mr. Frank Morton made a step toward her.
"I don't comprehend you yet—quite. You could not have imagined that you could ever go to jail if you had stolen every horsein my stable—and everything else I have? Don't give another thought to the matter. It was a harmless bit of fun that hurt nobody. As to Molly's fibbing—I was the tempter. What was the child to do? I think all the more of her for standing between you and possible trouble."
"I tempted Molly to tell her first lie!" She waived aside the hand he would have laid upon my head. "I shall recollect that as long as I live. I deserve to suffer for it. And I mean to punish myself by telling you the whole truth."
In the energy of her resolve, she, too, arose to her feet. A sort of ague went from her head to her feet. For an instant there was not a sign of color in her cheeks, then, a great billow of blushes beat her face down upon her hands. If I had not been clinging to her skirt I could hardly have got the meaning of the muffled words. Her lover had to bend his head to catch them.
"I had on a suit of Burwell's clothes!"
She threw up her head so abruptly that her face almost touched his before he could start back.
"Now"—she flung out passionately—"you will despise me! And you ought to!"
Her rush toward the door was intercepted by his quicker action. He seized both of her hands and would not let her pass.
"On the contrary, I never respected you before as I do this moment. You shall believe this, Molly Belle!"
Not a symptom of a "Miss"! And he the most punctilious of men in everything pertaining to polite address and chivalric reverence for women! His eyes had strange flashes in them when he turned to me. He was grave, but with a gravity that overlaid smiles. His voice was very gentle:—
"Molly, run away to play—there's a dear child!"
As I obeyed, I saw that he had not let go of Cousin Molly Belle's hands.
Likemy games, my stockings, and my frocks, they were home-made. We had no caged birds. Our yards and woods thrilled with bird-song all day long for eight months of the year, and mocking-birds filled June and July nights with music sweeter and more varied than the storied strain of the nightingale. I had never seen a canary, and knew nothing of him except as I had read of one in what I called a "pair of verses" to which I took a fancy. I used to sing them to a tune of my own making when grown-uppers were not listening:—
"Mary had a little bird,Feathers bright and yellow,Slender legs—upon my wordHe was a pretty fellow."Sweetest songs he often sungWhich much delighted Mary,And often where his cage was hungShe stood to hear Canary."
I classed Mary 'Liza with the grown-uppers. She loved cats, adopting two when they were blind kittens, and bringing them up in just such staid habits as made her incomparable among children. At six months of age they would doze at her feet on the rug while she studied, or ciphered, or read aloud, or stitched upon those everlasting chemises. When she took a walk for exercise (she never ran, or hopped, or skipped) they trotted demurely in the path, beside or behind her, indifferent to butterflies and grasshoppers, and as intent upon Behavior as their mistress. They were always fat and sleek, and ate civilized victuals,—bread, milk, and cooked meats cut into decent, miminy-piminy mouthfuls. Not one of them was ever known to commit the vulgarity of catching a mouse. Mary 'Liza considered it cruel, and eating raw flesh "a dirty habit." She, the cats, and Dorinda composed a Happy Family in which—barring the Rozillah episode—no accidents ever happened.
From earliest childhood my love for living creatures as companions and pets was a passion that wrought much anguish to me, and more casualties in the dumb animal kingdom than would be credited, were I to set down the full tale of my bantlings, and the fate of each. At a tender age, I sturdily refused to "call mine" the downiest darlings of the poultry-yard. There would be a few weeks of having, and loving, and fattening, and then the axe and the bloody log at the woodpile, and the stormy tears of bereavement. It mattered not to Aunt 'Ritta that my foster-children had names to which they answered, that they would feed from my hand, and hop on my shoulder, and run quacking, or squawking, orpiping, or chirping, at my heels across the yard, and follow me to the field like dogs. When the day and the hour—always unexpected to me—came, I "called and they answered not again," until, taught by bitter experience, I "struck" petting tame and edible living things, once and finally.
The miniature menagerie I then set up on my own account, and, as I shall show, to the detriment of everything entered upon the rolls, was stocked principally by the services of my colored contingent.
Among the first inmates—they all became patients in the long, or short run—were two striped ground squirrels (chipmunks) who were caught in a box with a falling door, and presented to me by Barratier. He lent me the box to keep them in. I fed and watered them warily and successfully for a couple of days by lifting the door an inch, having previously rapped upon it to scare the prisoners to the other end, then slipping in the dish of water and the nuts, sugar, or fruit that werethe day's rations. Supposing that kindness and comfortable quarters had tamed them into appreciation of my services and intentions, I raised the door two inches higher on the third day, and took a good look at the beauties huddled trembling in their safe corner. Their bright eyes were alluring, their quiescence was encouraging. I spoke to them in dulcet accents, and advanced a friendly hand. They met it more than half-way, one leaping upon my bare arm, running up to my shoulder, and, with one bound over my head, regaining his lost freedom. I caught his less active brother by the tail as he was sneaking under the door, and held him tight. In a quarter-jiffy he whisked his little body around and dug his teeth into my finger, and, as I still held on to his tail, incontinently shed the skin of the same, leaving it in my grasp. The last I ever saw of him was the flaunt of a gory, ghastly pennant, as the bearer vanished under a heap of stones. I flung the bloody casing from me with abhorrence. Now I can hope thatanother grew upon the denuded bones. Then I hoped it would not. The insult was gross.
The immediate successor of the ingrates was a mouse bestowed upon me by one of the stable hands. I named the waif "Caspar Hauser" forthwith, being fresh from the perusal of the history of that engaging fraud, and inducted him into a spare rat-trap set about closely with wires. A horsehair sparrow's nest was lined with raw cotton and put in one corner, a toy saucer of water in the other, and in the third a toy plate filled with cracked hickory nuts, interspersed with bits of sugar. Then I sat down upon the floor beside him, and began the business of taming him by getting him used to seeing me, cultivating his acquaintance by poking my finger between the bars, talking and singing to him, and endeavoring, by other ingenious devices, to make him feel at home. He scampered around the confines of his domicile, as in a treadmill, all the time I was thus employed, and could not be induced to touch his food.
Mary 'Liza and I had outgrown the trundle-bed, and had a room to ourselves upstairs. Into this I surreptitiously conveyed the improvised cage that night and hid it under the bed. When my bedfellow had fallen asleep, I got up softly, lighted a candle, and took a peep at my pet. He had gone regularly to bed after disposing of some of the nuts and scattering the remnants in every direction, and now lay curled up in the cotton-wool in the prettiest, most homelike way imaginable, fast asleep.
I hung over him, entranced. He was tamed! Before long he would be following me all over the house, playing hide-and-seek in corners, sitting upon his hind legs beside my plate at table, and nibbling such tidbits as I might give him. One particularly bright picture of our common future was of taking him to church, smuggling him into the pocket of my Sunday frock, and after settling myself comfortably upon my knees before a corner seat during the "long prayer," taking CasparHauser out and letting him play on the bench. What a boon his society would be—what a relief his antics while Mr. Lee droned through innumerable "We pray Thees!"
After I went back to bed I pursued these and other enchanting visions into dreamland. The next day I took Caspar Hauser into the garden for air and sunshine. His liveliness was something inconceivable by the human imagination. He chased himself frantically around the cage, regardless of my tender exhortations, until I began to fear that taming was a more tedious process than I had supposed. I set the cage upon the grass where the sun was hottest, withdrawing myself into the shade as less in need of light and warmth, and read a volume of Berquin'sChildren's Friendin full sight of Caspar Hauser. Whenever I turned a page I would stick my finger between the wires and chirrup encouragingly to the captive, all with a single eye to getting him used to me. His speed and staying powers were equally extraordinary, but I wascheered, when the forenoon was spent and I picked up the cage to take him in, by observing that he ran more deliberately and with occasional pauses. By the time I got him upstairs he lay down for a nap. He was still slumbering at my supper-time, and had not got his nap out when I went to bed, nor yet when breakfast was eaten and lessons said, next morning.
I had made up my mind by now that he was sick, and carried him into the garden once more. I had read that wild creatures physic themselves if allowed to seek such plants as instinct tells them are specifics for their ailments. Lifting Caspar Hauser from his woolly bed, I stroked him and called him by name. He was so tame by now that he did not struggle upon my palm. Only the rise and fall of his furry sides showed that he was alive. He was limp and helpless, and to me very lovable. I laid him upon a strip of turf hot with the sunshine that had steeped it for five hours. He had a liberal choice ofhealing herbs. Parsley, sage, mint, tansy, peppergrass, catnip, and sweet marjoram, rue and bergamot and balsam, flourished within a hundred lengths of his small body. While I watched him he stretched himself as a baby at awakening, and began to crawl weakly toward the tansy bed. To save him needless exertion I pulled a handful of the yellow heads and offered them to his inquisitive nose. Mam' Chloe had given me tansy tea for a bad cold last winter. It tasted nasty, but I got well. Instinct had "indicated" tansy to Caspar Hauser. He refused the panacea dumbly, and made, still feebly, for the parsley patch. I let him go a yard or more, when, fearing lest he might lose himself in the maze of luxuriant herbage, I dragged him tenderly back by the tail to the hot turf.
He had grown so tame that he never moved again.
The funeral took place that afternoon. We buried him next to Musidora. I had had enough of vaults, regarding them, with reason,as uncertain places of sepulture for the presumably defunct. I had never heard, or read, of cremation. I had had the misfortune to break my slate a few days before, and the biggest fragment made a nice tombstone for Caspar Hauser. With a nail and with infinite toil I produced a suitable epitaph.