The Annals of Ann Part 1

The Annals of Ann.

by Kate Trimble Sharber.

CHAPTER I

My Cousin Eunice is a grown young lady and she keeps a diary, which put the notion into my head of keeping one too.

There are two kinds of people that keep diaries, married ones and single ones. The single ones fill theirs full of poetry; the married ones tell how much it costs to keep house.

Not being extra good in grammar and spelling, I thought I'd copy a few pages out of Cousin Eunice's diary this morning as a pattern to keep mine by, but I was disappointed. Nearly every page I turned to in hers was filled full of poetry, which stuff never did make good sense to me, besides the trouble it puts you to by having to start every line with a fresh capital.

Cousin Eunice says nearly all famous people keep a diary for folks to read after they're dead. I always did admire famous people, especially Lord Byron and Columbus. And I've often thought I should like to be a famous person myself when I get grown. I don't care so much about graduating in white mull, trimmed in lace, as some girls do, for the really famous never graduate. They get expelled from college for writing little books saying there ain't any devil. But I should _love_ to be a beautiful opera singer, with a jasmine flower at my throat, and a fresh duke standing at the side door of the theater every night, begging me to marry him. Or I'd like to rescue a ship full of drowning people, then swim back to sh.o.r.e and calmly squeeze the salt water out of my bathing suit, so the papers would all be full of it the next morning.

Things don't turn out the way you expect them to, though, and I needn't count too much on these things. I might catch cold in my voice, or cramps in the sea and never get famous; but I'm going to keep this diary anyhow, and just hand it down to my grandchildren, for nearly _every_ lady can count on _them_, whether she's famous or infamous.

Maybe some rainy day, a hundred years from now, a little girl will find this book in the attic, all covered with dust, and will sit down and read it, while the rain sounds soft and pattery on the outside, and her mother calls and calls without getting an answer. This is not at all the right way to do, but what can they expect of you when your attic is such a very delicious place? Ours is high enough not to b.u.mp your head, even if you are as tall as my friend, Rufe Clayborne, and where a part of the window-pane is broken out an apple-tree sends in a perky little branch. Just before Easter every year I spend nearly all my time up here at this window, for the apple blossoms seem to have so many things to say to me; lovely things, that I can _feel_, but can not hear, and if I could write them down this would be the most beautiful book in the world. And great sheets of rain come sometimes; you can see them coming from the hills back of Mr. Clayborne's house, but the apple blossoms don't mind the wetting.

When I wrote "Mr. Clayborne" just then it reminded me of Cousin Eunice's diary. That was _one_ sensible word which was on every page.

Sometimes it was mixed up close along with the poetry, but I always knew who she meant, for he is my best friend and the grandest young man I've ever seen out of a book. His other name is Rufe, and he's an editor when he's in the city. But before he got to be an editor he was born across the creek from our farm, and we've always been great friends. His father and mine are also friends, always quarreling about whose bird-dogs and hotbeds are the best; and our mothers talk a heap about "original sin" and chow-chow pickle.

Maybe my grandchildren would like to know a few little things about me at the time I started keeping this diary for their sakes, so I'll stop now and tell them as quickly as I can, for I never did think just my own self was so interesting. If they have any imagination they can tell pretty well what kind of a person I was anyhow from the grand portrait I'm going to have painted for them in the gown I wear when I'm presented at court.

Well, I was born in the year--but if I tell that you will know exactly how old I am, that is if you can count things better than I can.

Anyhow, when I read a thing I'd rather they didn't tell just how old the heroine is. Then you can have her any age you like best. Maybe if I were to tell exactly how many birthdays I've had you would always be saying, like mother and Mammy Lou, "You're a mighty big girl to be doing such silly things." Or like Rufe says sometimes, "Ann, you're entirely too young to be interested in such subjects as that." So you will have to be satisfied when I tell you that I'm at the "gawky age." And a person is never surprised at anything that a girl at the "gawky age" does.

I am little enough still to love puppies and big enough to love Washington Irving. You might think these don't mix well, but they do.

On rainy mornings I like to take a puppy under one arm and _The Alhambra_ under the other, with eight or ten apples in my lap, and climb up in the loft to enjoy the greatest pleasure of my life. I sling _The Alhambra_ up on the hay first, then ease the puppy up and take the hem of my skirt between my teeth so the apples won't spill out while I go up after them. But I never even look at hay when there's a pile of cottonseed to wallow in.

As to my ways, I'm sorry to say that I'm what mother calls a "peculiar child." Mammy says I'm "the curiousest mixtry she ever seen." That's because I ask "Why?" very often and then lots of times don't exactly believe that things are that way when they're told to me. One day at Sunday-school, when I was about four, the teacher was telling about Jonah. Mother often told me tales, some that I called "make-believe,"

and others that I called "_so_ tales." When the teacher got through I spoke up and asked her if that was a "so tale." She said yes, it was, but I horrified every other child in the cla.s.s by speaking up again and saying, "Well, me don't believe it!"

Old as I am now, I don't see how Jonah's const.i.tution could have stood it, but I've got sense enough to believe many a thing that I can't see nor smell nor feel. An old man out in the mountains that had never been anywhere might say he didn't believe in electricity, but that wouldn't keep your electric light bill from being more than you thought it ought to be at the end of the month.

Speaking of bills reminds me of father. Father is not a rich man, but his folks used to be before the war. That's the way with so many people around here, they have more ancestry than anything else.

Still, we have perfectly lovely smelling old leather books in our library, and when cotton goes high we go up to the city and take a suite of rooms with a bath.

I am telling you all this, my grandchildren, to let you know that you have blue blood in your veins, but you mustn't let yours get too blue.

Father says it takes a dash of red blood mixed with blue, like turpentine with paint, to make it go.

Still, I hope the old place will be just as beautiful when my grandchildren get old enough to appreciate it as it is now, and not be sold and turned into a sanitarium, or a girls' school. The walls of the house are a soft grayish white, like a dear old grandmother's hair; and the mycravella roses in the far corner of the yard put _such_ notions into your head! There are rows of cedar trees down the walk, planted before Andrew Jackson's time; and at night there are the stars. I love stars, especially Venus; but there are a lot of others that I don't know the names of.

Inside, the house is cool and shady; and you can always find a place to lie down and read. Cousin Eunice says so many people spoil their houses by selecting carpets and wall-paper that look like they want to fight. But ours is not like that. Some corners in our library look like _Ladies' Own Journal_ pictures.

Cousin Eunice doesn't belong to our house, but I wish she did, for she's as beautiful as a magazine cover. And I think we have the nicest home in the world. Besides being old and big and far back in the yard, there's always the smell of apples up-stairs. And I'm sure mother is the nicest lady in the world. She wants everybody to have a good time, and no matter whether you're a man, a young lady, or a little girl, she lets you scatter your pipes, love-letters and doll-rags from the front gate to the backest chicken-coop without ever fussing. Mother admires company greatly. She doesn't have to perspire over them herself, though, for she has Mammy Lou to do all the cooking and Dilsey to make up the beds. So she invited Cousin Eunice to spend the summer with us and asked Bertha, a cousin on the other side, to come at the same time, for she said girls _love_ to be together. We soon found out, though, that some girls do and some don't.

Cousin Eunice said I might always express my frank opinion of people and things in my diary, so I take pleasure in starting in on Bertha.

Bertha, she is a _cat_! Even Rufe called her one the night she got here. Not a straight-out cat, exactly, but he called her a kitten!

You see, when Bertha was down here on a little visit last year she and Rufe had up a kind of summer engagement. A summer engagement is where the girl wears the man's fraternity pin instead of a ring. And when she came again this time it didn't take them two hours to get summer engaged again, it being moonlight on the front porch and Bertha looking real soft and purry.

Then the very next week Cousin Eunice came! And poor Rufe! We all felt _so_ sorry for him, for, from the _first_ minute he looked at her he was in love; and it's a terrible thing to be in love and engaged at the same time, when one is with _one_ girl and the other to another!

And it was so plain that the eyes of the _potatoes_ could see it! But Bertha hadn't an idea of giving up anybody as good-looking as Rufe to another somebody as good-looking as Cousin Eunice, which mother said was a shame, and _she_ never did such a thing when _she_ was a girl; but Mammy Lou said it was no more than Rufe deserved for not being more careful.

But anyway, Cousin Eunice and Bertha hadn't been together two days before they hated each other so they wouldn't use the same powder rag!

They just couldn't bear the sight of each other because they could both bear the sight of Rufe so well. This was a disappointment to me, for I had hoped they would go into each other's rooms at night and brush their hair, half undressed, and have as good a time as the pictures of ladies in underwear catalogues always seem to be having.

But they are not at all friendly. They have never even asked each other what make of corsets they wear, nor who operated on them for appendicitis. Bertha talks a great deal about Rufe and how devoted he was to her last summer, but Cousin Eunice won't talk at all when Bertha's around. She sits still and looks dumb and superior as a trained nurse does when you are trying to find out what it is that the patient has got.

Cousin Eunice has a right to act superior, though, for while other girls are spending their time embroidering chafing-dish ap.r.o.ns she is studying books written by a man with a name like a sneeze. Let me get one of the books to see how it is spelled. N-i-e-t-z-s-c-h-e! There! I got it down at last! And Cousin Eunice doesn't have just a plain parlor at home to receive her beaux in; she has a studio. A studio is a room full of things that catch dust. And the desire of her life is to write a little brown-backed book that people will fill full of pencil marks and always carry around with them in their suit-cases.

She doesn't neglect her outside looks, though, just because her mind is so full of great thoughts. No indeed! Her fountain pen jostles against her looking-gla.s.s in her hand-bag, and her note-book gets dusted over with pink powder.

Now, Bertha is entirely different! No matter how the sun is shining outside she spends all her mornings up in her room shining her finger-nails; and she wears _pounds_ and _pounds_ of hair on the back of her head. Father says the less a girl has on the inside the more she will stick on the outside of her head, and lots of men can't tell the difference. Bertha certainly isn't at a loss for lovers. She gets a great many letters from a "commercial traveler." A "commercial traveler" is a man who writes to his girl on different hotel paper every day. These letters are a great comfort to her spirit when Rufe acts so loving around Cousin Eunice; and she always has one sticking in her belt when Rufe is near by, with the name of the hotel showing.

Every night just before or just after supper I always go out to the kitchen and tell Mammy Lou all the news I've seen or heard that day.

She laughs when I tell her about how Bertha is trying to hold on to Rufe.

"'Tain't a speck o' use," she said to-night so emphatically that I was afraid the omelette would fall. "Why, a camel can dance a Virginny reel in the eye of a needle quicker than a gal can sick a man back to lovin' her after he's done took a notion to change the picture he wears in his watch!"

Mammy told the truth, I'm sure, for Bertha has worn all her prettiest dresses and done her hair two new ways, trying to get him back; but he is still "coldly polite," which I think is the meanest way on earth to treat a person. Not that Bertha doesn't deserve it, for she knew they were just joking about that summer engagement, but she still wears the fraternity pin, which of course causes Cousin Eunice to be "coldly polite" to Rufe; and altogether we don't really need a refrigerator in the house this summer.

Mammy Lou and I had been trying to think up a plan to thaw out the atmosphere, but this morning a way was provided, and I greatly enjoyed being "an humble instrument," as Brother Sheffield says.

Everything was draggy this morning. Bertha was down in the parlor singing "popular songs" very loud as I came down the steps with my diary in my hand. I _despise_ popular songs! As I went past the kitchen door on my way to the big pear tree which I meant to climb and write in my book I saw that Mammy Lou was having the time of her life telling Cousin Eunice all about when Rufe was a baby. She had called her in there to get some fresh b.u.t.termilk, and Cousin Eunice was drinking gla.s.s after gla.s.s of it with such a rapt look on her face I knew she didn't realize that she couldn't get on her tight clothes till mid-afternoon.

"Of _course_ he's a extry fine young man!" mammy said, dipping for another gla.s.sful. "There never was nary finer baby--an' wasn't I _right there_ when Mr. Rufe was born?"

"Sure enough!" Cousin Eunice said, looking entranced.

This wasn't much more entertaining to me than Bertha's singing, for I had heard it all so many times before, so I went out to the pear tree and climbed up, but I couldn't think of even one word that would be of interest to my grandchildren. So I just wrote my name over and over again on the fly-pages. I wonder what makes them call them "fly-pages?" Then I closed my book and climbed down again. I started back to the house by the side way, and met Rufe coming up the walk toward the front door.

"h.e.l.lo, Rufe," I said, running to meet him and walking with him to the front steps. "I'm so glad to see you. Everything is so draggy this morning. Won't you sit on the steps and talk to me a while? Or are you in a hurry?"

"I'm always in a hurry when I'm going to your house," he answered with a look in the direction of Cousin Eunice's window. "And my visits always seem as short as a wedding journey when the bridegroom's salary is small."

He dusted off the step, though, and sat down; and I told him that Cousin Eunice was drinking b.u.t.termilk in her kimono and wouldn't be in a mood to dress for another hour. Then I told him what a hard time I'd had trying to think up something interesting to write in my diary. He said, looking again toward Cousin Eunice's window, that there was only _one_ thing in the world to write about! But he supposed I was too young to know anything about that. I spoke up promptly and told him a girl never _got_ too young to know about love.

"Love!" he said, trying to look surprised. "Who mentioned love?"

Just then I heard the flutteration of a silk petticoat on the porch behind the vines, but Rufe was gazing so hard at the blue hills on the far side of town that he didn't hear it. So, without saying anything to him, I leaned over far enough to look under the banisters, and saw the bottom of Bertha's skirt and a skein of blue silk thread lying on the floor. So I knew she was sitting there working on that everlasting chafing-dish ap.r.o.n. Then Satan put an idea into my head. I think it was Satan.

"Rufe," I said, talking very loud and quick, so Bertha would just _have_ to hear me, "what's the difference between a kitten and a cat?"

Rufe at last got his eyes unfixed from the blue hills and just stared at me foolishly for a second.

"Am I the parent of a child that I should have to answer fool questions?" he said.