Just For Fun

The floor 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 in The Fairchild Family of 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 Eliza told 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, and said 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 “What next, 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 hives by 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 took The Fairchild Family out 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 of the 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 are dead, 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 gale of 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 you can’t change 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 be sinful for 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 on skirts, 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 part of 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 of syrupy 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 an extensive 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’s house 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’t I 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 I have 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.