My First Lie, and What Came of It.

“He is 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 heard a 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 complexion, 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 more loudly. 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 just as 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 so dreadful far! 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 make her anxious, 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’s at 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 and Miss 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 of his 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 take Mr. 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.”

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 myself for 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 may have 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 I got 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 instinctively turned 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. I stole 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 perplexity remained. 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 a mean thing 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 horse in 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.