The Annals of Ann Part 5

"Yuletide in the Southland" is what Professor Young calls it, but you would never know from the sound how nice it really is. It means that the Youngs have come down to the bungalow to spend Christmas and have brought his brother, Julius, to spend it too. Now, I admire Mr. Julius Young, both his name and his ways. He noticed me the minute he got off the train and said I would have to be his sweetheart. Although I have learned, from being so deceived by Doctor Gordon's remarks like that, you mustn't depend on what they say, still you can't help but like a person when they say it to you.

He is not a college professor like his brother, but he makes his living drawing pictures. Now, the bad part about making your living out of poetry or art is that so _often_ you don't do it. This is the way with Julius. He draws fully as good as other artists, but he never has been able to get people to notice it. Professor Young says his work lacks "the divine spark," and so the poor young man has to heat his coffee over the gas-jet, like they always have to do in pitiful magazine stories. So much poetry and art have made him real thin, with strange flannel shirts, and he looks half like a writing person and half like a hero which was raised out West. He doesn't act as peculiar as he looks, though, laughing as jolly as Mr. Parkes if anything funny happens. And he knows so much about horses, having traveled considerable, that father thinks he is very clever. Father says you can excuse an artist with horse sense better than you can just a plain artist.

Rufe and Cousin Eunice are down in the country too, partly at our house and partly at Rufe's folks'. This makes a nice reunion for them, being as Marcella, Rufe's sister, is home for the first time in three Christmases, having been off studying how to play on the piano.

Ever since during the chestnuts getting ripe Marcella has been good friends with me, for she loves the outdoors, and there wasn't anybody but me that had the time to spare to go with her through the woods.

She felt sorry for me, too, not getting to go back to school in the city this fall, and so she has taught me a lot. Mother and father said they just couldn't spare me, being the only one that lived, and born to them in their old age. It looks like if my brothers and sisters had known how inconvenient it was for me to be the only child they would have tried a little harder to live.

Marcella is not pretty in a blonde-headed way, like Ann Lisbeth and Bertha, but her hair and eyes are as dark as chocolate candy when you've grated a whole half a cake in it, and her skin looks like cream does when it's nearly ready to churn. She wouldn't go with me and Rufe and Cousin Eunice to meet the Youngs at the train, being ashamed on Julius' account, I reckon, both being single. But _we_ went and Professor and Mrs. Young said they were too happy for anything to be back in the country again for a regular old-fashioned Christmas. They said they were going to do everything just like it used to be in old England, which Professor Young had brought a book along to read about.

They said this book would "infuse a genuine Yule spirit," but if they had sc.r.a.ped as many cake pans and seeded as many raisins as I have they would have more of that spirit now than they could hold without a dose of cordial.

Well, this morning we collected on the other side of the creek to go after holly to decorate the bungalow with, me, the Youngs, and Rufe and Cousin Eunice. Julius said a good many compliments about the nature you could see all over the hills, but Rufe said shucks, if he had _plowed_ over that nature as often as _he_ had it wouldn't look so pretty.

Cousin Eunice said let's go straight up through the woods and maybe we would meet Marcella coming back from a poor person's house where she had been to carry sick folks' things to. This plan must have been made up between them, for, sure enough, when we got to the tip-top of the hill we found Marcella sitting under some cedar trees resting, and leaning back against one, just like it was done for a purpose. She had on her red hat and her little red jacket, which set off her pale looks considerable, and if she _did_ do it for the sake of Julius she knew the right way to get on the good side of an artist, for he commenced acting impressed from the start. If a person is trying to be romantic it is a better plan to meet a man under a cedar tree with a tired expression than it is to sprain your ankle so they will have to carry you home in their arms, like they do in books. I don't know _why_ authors sprain so many of their characters' ankles, and then let them make love smelling of liniment.

Mother says in olden times people married each other because the ladies were pretty and could make good cakes and the young men were able to take care of them, but nowadays they marry because they "feel"

the same way about things. This is called congenial, and an _overly_ congenial person is an "affinity." Cousin Eunice and Rufe felt the same way about Keats and married. Doctor Gordon and Ann Lisbeth both loved white hyacinths and married, and this morning I heard Marcella and Julius say they felt the same way about music. Marcella was playing on the piano in our parlor and we were all listening when Julius remarked:

"Oh, isn't it rare to find a woman who can properly interpret Beethoven?"

Father was in the room and spoke up. "Yes," he said, "and rarer still, in these days, to find one who can properly interpret the _bake-oven_."

Marcella thinks the world and all of Beethoven and Wagner and other persons whose names are not spelt the way you would think.

[Ill.u.s.tration: For the sake of Julius _Page 108_]

Later, when there wasn't anybody present but just those two, I heard Julius ask Marcella if she would "sit" to him. I thought at first he must be proposing, for the folks around here say that Widow Hollis is "setting up to" anybody when she's trying to marry. But Marcella said right away that she would be delighted, which I knew couldn't mean marrying, for when a young lady gets proposed to she never even _lets on_ how glad she is, much less says _delighted_ right out in plain words. He said her face was the purest Greek he ever saw, which didn't make her mad, although it would me, for a Greek is a smiling, oily-looking person which runs a candy kitchen.

When he mentioned her face looking like a Greek's face she acted so pleased that he went on to tell her he had never been so impressed with anybody's looks in his life as he was with hers that first day under the cedar tree. He said oh, if he had such a model he could do _anything_, for he was sure she had soul as well as beauty. The idea of him telling her she had a soul--as if anybody but foreign heathens didn't have! She said she thought it would be a n.o.ble life to be a model and inspiration to a man of lofty ideals--like Dan T. Gabriel Rosetty's wife was, only sometimes the _woman_ was starved. If I'd been Marcella I'd been ashamed to mention such a thing as not getting enough to eat, but it seemed to please Julius, for he got over closer and commenced making a sketch of her on the back of an envelope.

This morning early Mrs. and Professor Young came over to ask father where they could find a Yule log and a peac.o.c.k. They said in the "eternal fitness of things" they must have a log to burn all Christmas night and a peafowl to serve with "brilliant plumage" at the dinner table. Mrs. Young went around to the kitchen to ask Mammy Lou if she knew how to prepare the peac.o.c.k the way they wanted it and brought to the table in its feathers with the tail spread. Mammy wasn't a speck more polite than she was last summer about the roosters.

"No, _ma'am_," she told her, "Mis' Mary won't let even so much as a pin feather come on her table, much less a whole crittur covered with 'em. Looks like _that_ would turn a n.i.g.g.e.r's stomach, let alone white folks; but there ain't no 'countin' for the taste o' _Yankees_."

Professor Young tried to explain that he was cooked without the feathers which was put on afterward and an old English custom, but that wouldn't pacify mammy.

"Well, all I can say for the old English is that they must have stomachs on 'em like _buzzards_," mammy told them.

The Yule log was easier and so they got that, but it isn't to be lit till to-morrow night with ceremony.

Julius and Marcella had a long walk through the woods after sarsaparilla vines this afternoon, and talked a good deal about how they would like a house furnished if they were going to furnish one.

They never got as far as the kitchen and smokehouse, but they both agreed that they would love better than anything in the world to have a dark green library with dull bra.s.s jardinieres. (I had a _terrible_ time with that word.) Julius then spoke up and said _any_ kind of a library that had her in it would be artistic enough for _him_, which I thought was saying a great deal, for artists make out like they can't live without their "atmosphere," meaning battered-up tea-kettles and dirty curtains from Persia. Marcella must have thought he meant something by it, too, for she turned as red as when you have a breaking out.

I helped mother and mammy considerable this morning by tasting all the things to see if they were just right, for we are going to have a big dinner to-morrow and invite them all.

To-night we all went over to the bungalow to hear Professor Young read about how they used to do Christmas things in England before the Pilgrim Fathers. It sounded awful nice about the waifs singing, "G.o.d rest you, merry gentlemen," on the outside of your window, and the servants at dinner bringing in the boar's head, singing too. Professor Young said he thought these old customs ought to be revived, especially in the South, where we had old-timey houses and old family servants. Father laughed and said, well, we _might_ get Mammy Lou to bring in the turkey to-morrow to the tune of "There _wuz_ er moanin'

lady, she _lived_ in er moanin' lan'," which was all the tune she knew besides Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, one being about as Christmasy as the other.

After a while Mrs. Young started up the chafing-dish and called Julius from over in the corner where he and Marcella were talking very easy, to help her with the coffee. She hadn't more than said coffee when Professor Young picked up his book again.

"Why, Marie, my love," he interrupted her, "coffee is not at all a drink in keeping with the season. To preserve the unities we ought to have a wa.s.sail bowl." Then he read us how easy it was to make up the wa.s.sail. All you have to do is to take wine, or ale, and sugar and nutmeg, mixed with ginger and spice, then have apples and toast and roasted crabs floating around in it. You must mix it up in an old silver bowl that has been in your family a hundred years with the coat of arms on it. A coat of arms is two peculiar animals standing on their hind legs pawing at each other.

Mrs. Young said she was as anxious to preserve the unities as Augustus, but how could she when there wasn't any wine or ale or ginger or crabs, to say nothing of the silver bowl with the coat of arms marked on it. Rufe said not to worry, for we might find it hard, along toward midnight and day, to preserve much unity between wa.s.sail and Welsh rabbit, if we ate them together, so the wa.s.sail bowl was dropped.

All during my diary there hasn't been a thing as thrilling to happen as what happened to-day, Christmas Day, to Julius and Marcella.

Getting your arm broken and carried to the hospital by your future husband wasn't anything to compare with this.

Everybody was happy at the dinner table, me especially, for besides all the books I wanted I got a pyrography set and a pearl ring. I don't think any girl is complete without a pearl ring. The company all praised mammy's cooking and Julius remarked that after such a dinner as that it would be pretty tough on a fellow to go back to town the next day and live on coffee heated over the gas-jet and crackers. We laughed considerable over the gas-jet, all but Marcella, who didn't look funny.

Just as we got the plum pudding burning and Julius had said he wished he could paint a picture of it Dilsey came into the dining-room with a telegram addressed to Mr. Julius Young. This excited Mammy Lou, who admires him very much, so she nearly spilt all the sauce, saying, "Thar! I jes' _know_ it's some of yo' folks dead!"

Julius laughed and told her he reckoned not, as all the folks he had on earth were right there at the table, and he looked at Marcella when he said it in preference to his own brother! Much to all of our disappointment Julius never even opened his telegram and read it, although we didn't say anything about it. He put it in his pocket and went on eating pudding like it wasn't any more to be proud of than just a plain mail letter.

After dinner father took them all out in the garden to look at some new hotbeds he was having made and Julius and Marcella went into the parlor. I stayed in the hall by the door, not being wanted in the parlor and not admiring hotbeds much. They didn't sit down, but went over and stood by the piano and all of a sudden Marcella said nervous-like:

"Why don't you read your telegram? It might contain good news."

"It _is_ good news, I feel sure," he told her, "and I wanted you to be the first one to know it--that's the reason I didn't mention it at the table."

She said well hurry up and tell her, so he did. He said the day he saw her leaning against the cedar tree he thought she was so beautiful that he went straight back to the bungalow and made a picture of her like she was then and sent it to a large magazine up North which had promised to give five thousand dollars to the person which sent them the best picture by Christmas, and he believed the telegram was to say that his was it. Marcella told him well, he had a high opinion of his work to take it for granted that it had won such a prize as _that_.

"Not at all," he said, catching her hand in his, "for it was a picture of _you_."

This sounded so loving that I wasn't prepared for what came next. I heard them tear open the telegram and Marcella said, "_Good-ness_;"

and he said, "Well, I'll be--I wasn't looking for this!" and it made me so interested that before I knew it I was in the parlor, though so easy and it nearly dark that I don't think they saw me.

As near as I could make out the telegram told Julius they thought his picture was so good they were not only going to give him the prize like they promised, but wanted to engage him to draw for them all the next year and how much salary would he do it for.

"Why, you can have your green library and bra.s.s jardinieres _now_,"

Marcella said, still holding hands and her voice like it was about to cry. He just looked at her and looked a long time without saying a word. Finally he put both hands on her shoulders and looked down into her eyes.

"I can have nothing without you," he said in the most devoted voice I ever heard. "It is your beauty that has made my picture succeed. If I amount to anything you will have to come with me--will you?"

"You want me for your model?" she asked very quivery and making out like she didn't know what he was driving at, but she put her hands up on his shoulders too, which was enough to give her away.

"True, I can not draw without you for my model," he said so grand and sweet that it made you feel very strange listening to it, "but I can not _live_ without you for my wife."

This won her. It was enough to win _anybody_, coming from an artist, and good looking at that.

CHAPTER VII