Side-Blades & Water-Melons
My far-away cousin could never have been pretty except to a fond
husband's eyes. I should have liked to think her tolerably good-looking
now, since he loved her so dearly and praised her so enthusiastically,
and she was so much more than good to me. I could not help using and
believing the eyes that showed me a tall, lean woman whose skin, once
fair, was now nearly as yellow as the freckles spattered all over her
forehead, nose, cheeks, and chin. Nose and chin were long, her
cheek-bones were high, her eyes were pale, the lashes so light and thin
as to be scarcely visible at all, and her scanty flaxen hair was
dragged tightly away from a high bony forehead. Her gown to-day was
white cambric, as clean, as glossy, and as opaque as cream-laid
letter-paper. Her head was bare, and she carried over it a green parasol
which made her complexion livid. Her voice was soft and sweet, and her
manners were liked by everybody. I was glad to think of these things,
and to feel the charm of tone and manner, as she asked if I "would not
like to pay a visit to the peaches and watermelons."
I should have preferred to stay where I was, having got very well
acquainted with my attendant fairies, and eaten enough sweets to take
the edge from my appetite, even for ripe, fresh fruit. Still, I got up
with a tolerable show of cordiality, comprehending that she meant to
please me, took the hand she offered, and was soon out of the cool shade
in the open field separating garden from orchard. Captain Gates was
really as proud of his reputation as the most successful fruit-grower
in the county as his wife was, although he affected to ridicule her
weakness in the same direction. There were two acres of peach trees,
most of them laden with fruit. When pressed to "eat all I could
swallow," I managed to do away with three immense globes of
crimson-and-gold, and then gave out, shamefacedly:--
"You see I am so little, and the peaches are so big!" I urged. "I hold
just so many and no more."
"Of course, you comical little thing!" interrupted Cousin Nancy, highly
amused. "By and by, on our way back from the watermelon patch, maybe
there will be more room. I shan't ask you to pick the melons from the
vines and eat _them_ by the dozen. Come along!"
She did not seem to mind the heat that struck upon my face and head like
the breath of an oven, as we crossed another open field, to that in
which Captain Gates's famous melons lay by the hundred, growing larger
and more luscious in the August sunlight that warmed them through and
through. Some were dark green, some light green, some were streaked and
mottled with white-and-green.
"Oh, Cousin Nancy!" I cried, "I did not know there were so many in the
world! What _will_ you do with them all?"
She led the way farther into the network of vines, the rank leaves and
starry blossoms bobbing about her feet. The fruit and flowers of Cold
Comfort did something toward filling the place left void in her heart by
the lack of the children that had never come. She stood still and looked
over the wide patch as if she had made every melon there, and meant to
have the full credit for her work.
"Do with them, monkey! Why they are as good as a silver mine--the
beauties! Every full-grown one stands for a quarter of a dollar. We send
six wagon-loads to Richmond every week, and people come for them from
every direction--as far as across the river in Goochland; and we give
dozens away to our neighbors, and the negroes come at night to steal
them--Oh! _oh!!_ OH!!!"
She gathered her skirts tightly and high above her ankles with both
hands, letting the green parasol tumble, head foremost, to the ground,
and screeched as if she had trod upon a yellow-jacket's nest. She was
going to have Nerves again, with no hartshorn, or burnt feathers, or
turkey-tail fan, or Cousin 'Ratio near. I started to run to the house
for help, but she grabbed my frock frantically.
"If you budge one inch you are a dead child!" she wheezed, her pale eyes
bulging from the sockets. "Cap'n Gates and the overseer came out here
last night and just sowed all this patch with side-blades!"
(Scythe-blades.) "Edges up! Sharp as razors and thick as thieves!
Hundreds of them! To keep the negroes from stealing any more of them! I
heard Cap'n Gates tell them he was going to do it, and the overseer told
them this morning that they _had_ done it. And I haven't an atom of an
idea where a solitary one of the murderous things is! We are as good as
dead if we try to get out. We might tread upon one, at the first step!
How could I forget it? Oh, how could I?"
I felt the blood drain away from my face, and I trembled as violently as
she. Then a thought came to me, and I got it out between chattering
teeth.
"We didn't tread on any of them coming into the patch."
"That was sheer providence, honey. We _might_ have been cut in two
before we had gone ten yards."
"But, Cousin Nancy!" catching at her hands as she began to wring them
again, and to sob and squeal as she had done in the morning. "Listen! I
am sure I could go out by the very same path! Let's try! We can't stay
here always."
"_Path!_ There isn't a sign of a path! Look!"
She pointed a bony finger in the direction we had come. The leaves and
blossoms disturbed by our feet and skirts were as still as the hundreds
and thousands of other leaves on all sides of us. We had not bruised a
vine, or left a footprint, that we could see. The sun poured down upon
us like fire from heaven; we were in the middle of the patch that
seemed, to my horrified eyes, miles and miles in extent, and not another
creature was in sight.
"Our only hope is to scream as loud as ever we can," said Cousin Nancy.
"Nobody knows where we are; the hands are all in the tobacco, a mile on
the other side of the house, and Cap'n Gates and Mr. Owen may be even
farther off, for all I know. If we can't make anybody hear us, the Lord
have mercy upon our souls! We shall have sunstroke inside of an hour."
I picked up the green parasol, and with clumsy, shaking fingers opened
it, and stood on tiptoe to hold it over her head, crying, meantime, as
piteously as she, such was the contagion of hysterical terror. Then,
with one accord, we lifted up our voices, weak with weeping, in a thin
screech. I said "Help! help! help!" she cried, "Murder! murder!" and
"Cap'n _Ga-a-tes!_" We made enough noise to startle the dogs in the
house-yard and at the stables, and brought from the nearer "quarters"
and corn-field a gang of negroes, of all sizes and ages, all running at
the top of their speed, and the faster as they descried us. It would
have been excruciatingly funny at any other time, and to one that was
not an actor in the drama, to observe that not one man, woman, or
pickaninny of the excited crowd offered to pass the confines of the
melon patch. Each one was mindful of the hundreds of buried side-blades
with their edges uppermost, and almost all were bare-footed.
"Run! some of you-all, for Marster an' Mr. Owen!" shrieked Malviny,
getting her wits together before the others could rally theirs. The
shrill order arose above the chorus of groans and cries and pitying
exclamations, and Cousin Nancy, on hearing it, gave one wild cry, and
dropped where she stood, a heap of white cambric, head, arms, and green
parasol, crushing the vines, and her head just grazing a mammoth melon.
I had never been so frightened in all my life as when I got hold of her
head, and tried to lift it. It was as heavy as lead. Too much terrified
and too foolish to bethink myself that a cut would bleed, I concluded
that she had struck one of the murderous blades, and it had killed her.
Her eyes were closed; her jaw had fallen; her cheek lay close against
that of the big melon, and the vines met over her nose. It was a ghastly
and a grotesque spectacle, and I behaved as any other nine-year-old
would--jumped up and down and screamed, beating my palms together, and
calling alternately for "Father!" and "Cousin 'Ratio!"
Since that horrible moment I have believed stories read and heard of
people being scared to death, or into insanity. In the great, round
world, there was nothing present to me but a cruel expanse of green
below, a white-hot sky above, and at my feet a dead woman, killed by
the razor-like blades thick-set under every leaf, and guarding every
melon. Then all this was swept out of sight by a black wave that took me
off my feet.
I awoke in the shade of the peach orchard. Mr. Owen, the overseer, had
laid me down on the grass, and I heard him say, "She's all right now." I
sat up and stared around me. Cousin Nancy, still in a dead faint, was
stretched upon the ground a little way off, a fluttering swarm of women
about her, with water, brandy, hartshorn, cologne, fans, and burning
feathers, and Cousin 'Ratio, kneeling over her, was calling in her ear,
the tears running down his bristly cheeks.
"Miss Nancy! honey! sugar-lump! wake up! it's me, dearie! The danger is
all over. What a _doggoned_ fool I was to put the side-blades there!"
When she at last revived, she was taken to the house and put to bed. She
was not yet able to sit up when my father and mother drove over for me
in the cool of the afternoon.
"My tomfoolery came near to being the end of the poor dear," said Cousin
'Ratio, walking with us to the carriage, when we had taken leave of his
wife. "I feel mighty bad about it, too, as you may suppose, for it was
my fault in not reminding her of those cussed side-blades. Between
ourselves, Burwell,"--coming nearer to my father and glancing over his
shoulder to be sure none of the servants were within hearing,--"Owen and
I put just exactly _two_ in the whole patch, and they were near the
fence. Miss Nancy never went within a Sabbath day's journey of them. We
made a mighty parade of toting twenty of them past the quarters, taking
two of the hands along to help. They laid them down by the fence, and we
came down after dark and carried all but two off to the old tobacco
barn, and hid them there. I wasn't likely to rust my best side-blades by
burying them in the dirt. But I'd rather have ruined them all and lost
every blessed melon on the place, than have given Miss Nancy's Nerves
such a shock."
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