DOLLY'S JOURNAL
"I'M awfully excited to-day, because—NO, that is not the way to begin
a journal. Margot advises me to start one, now I am eighteen. She has
been advising it ever since my birthday, and this morning she gave me a
charming little red book, with lock and key. So I suppose I really must
do as she wishes."
"She says it will be a make-weight to my spirits when I am disposed to
bubble over. Is there any harm in bubbling over? The world would be
very dull if everybody's feelings were always to be kept hermetically
sealed."
"No fear of mine being so, at all events. I'm not reserved, and I hate
reserve, and I can't get on with reserved people. I like to say out
just what I think. Of course there must always be some little inner
reserves in everybody; at least I suppose so; but that is different
from taking a pride in hiding what one feels, and in trying to seem
unlike what one is."
"There's one good thing about a private journal! One can say exactly
what one likes, and nobody's feelings are hurt. That is the only
difficulty about always saying out what one thinks. Some people are
so awfully thin-skinned, always taking offence. Of course the polite
way of describing them is to say that they are 'sensitive'; but when I
speak out what I think, I call them ill-tempered."
"I suppose the correct opening for a journal is a general statement
about everything and everybody; a description of one's home and people
and ways of life. But that would take a lot of time and patience. If I
have the time, I haven't the patience."
"Still, something has to be written by way of introduction, though
really I don't know why. If anybody ever reads what I write, it can
only be one who knows all about everything already. And most likely my
first entry will be my last."
"However—we live at Woodlands; not a big grand place, but the quaintest
of old-fashioned houses in the quaintest of old-fashioned gardens.
The house has wings and high gables and queer little windows. And the
garden in summer has no horrid carpet-patterns or red triangles and
blue squares, but is just one mass of trained sweetness—just Nature
under restraint. That was what Edred said one day last spring."
"Craye is ten minutes off, down the hill, a funny old town in a
hollow. Craye went to sleep a few hundred years ago, like the Kaiser
Barbarossa; and unlike the Kaiser, it has never woke up since, not even
once in a century. Yet Craye has a railway station, and actually it
is not more by rail than an hour and a half from London. Only, as one
always has to wait at least an hour at the Junction, the journey can't
be done under two hours and a half."
"Now for the preliminary statement about our important selves."
"There is my father first; the dearest and kindest and best old father
that ever lived. Not really old either, and so handsome and soldierly
still. He can be sharp sometimes, but not to me. He spends lots of time
in the clouds, and when he comes out of them, he does dearly love to
spoil his Dolly. I am sure she loves to be spoilt."
"Then there is my mother. She is two years older than my father, which
didn't perhaps show when they were young, but it does now. A woman of
sixty-three is so much more elderly than a man of sixty-one. At least
it is so in this house. Mother has silver-white hair, and she stoops,
and is getting infirm—more than many of her age; while my father is
still slim and upright and active. He has iron-grey hair and never an
ache or a pain, and he makes nothing of a fifteen-miles' walk."
"I sometimes think my mother is almost more like a grandmother in the
house; so gentle and invalidish, and able to do so little. Yet nothing
would go straight without her; and she and he are like lovers still;
except that he has a sort of reverent way of looking up to her. He
always calls her 'Mother,' and she calls him 'My dear!' Never anything
else."
"Next comes Isabel, our eldest. She is thirty, and looks like forty.
She has managed everything for the last ten years, and she is a dear
good creature,—only rather fussy about little things. She counts
herself tremendously severe with me, though she never can say 'No' when
I coax; but then she always gives in 'only this once.' She is full of
sense, and can't understand a joke by any possibility.
"Then follows Margot, poor dear! Four years younger than Isabel, and
eight years older than me. Margot has a weak spine, and lies down a
good deal; still she hates to be called an invalid, and never will talk
about herself and her symptoms. So people don't get tired of Margot's
invalidism. I don't think I should describe her as the model invalid of
story books; and yet she is not what Miss Baynes calls 'the fractious
sufferer of real life.' Sometimes she has depressed moods, but when she
is happy, she has the sweetest face in the world. And even when she is
depressed, she never gets into a temper."
"Last of all there is me—Dolly—the household pet and plague. I am not
like Issy or Margot. Issy is substantial and slow; and Margot is tall
and slim; while I am small and bony, but not a scrap delicate, and
everything that I do is always done in a hurry. I have a great lot of
fair hair—golden hair some call it—but the trouble of my life is a snub
nose,—a real undeniable little snub. Nothing can hide or cure that.
Issy's is too long, with a droop at the end, worse even than mine; but
Margot has the sweetest little love of a straight nose, neither long
nor short. If only I had a nose like hers, I should be perfectly happy."
"Well, no—not perfectly, perhaps; because I should want to be tall and
graceful also. It would be so nice to carry one's head higher than
other people, and always to be gentle, and calm, and dignified. I
should wish to be like Lady Geraldine—"
"'While as one who quells the lions, with a steady eye serenely
She, with level fronting eyelids, passed out stately from the room.'"
"That would be delicious! I suppose most people's eyelids are level,
and face the front; but it sounds distinguished. Mine, of course, are
level, only they are always on the move, and I am afraid I haven't
'steady eyes serenely' quelling other people."
"O me, what nonsense I am writing! Is that the good of a journal—to
show one more of one's real self?"
"I have done at last with regular lessons, and a daily governess. After
the holidays, I shall be supposed to read history and French, and to
practise regularly. But my plans always come to grief."
"They say I ought to take Emmeline for my model—good dear Emmeline
Claughton, who gets up at six and lives by clockwork, and does
everything, and has time for everybody. Whereas I lie in bed till
nearly eight, and have to scramble to be in time, and spend every day
unlike the rest, and hate rules, and never have time for anything
except fun and story books, skating in winter, and tennis in summer. So
I don't seem likely to grow into a second Emmeline."
"Would Edred be pleased, if I did?"
"How stupid of me to write that! What did make me? I have a great
mind to scratch out the sentence. Now I can never show my journal to
anybody."
"After all, why should I show it? And what is the harm of speaking
about Edred?"
"Perhaps the proper thing here is to make a statement about the
Claughtons. They live at the Park and are very rich. There is only one
daughter, Emmeline, and Emmeline has two brothers, Mervyn and Edred.
Mervyn is the heir, and he does nothing particular, but comes and goes,
and bothers people. Edred is a curate in London. I like him—oh, much
the best of the two, and so I know does Emmie."
"Mr. Claughton is kind, only too pompous, and I am not very fond of
Mrs. Claughton. She has such a way of setting everybody to rights. But
very likely, she doesn't mean to be disagreeable."
"I'm most awfully excited about—"
* * * * * *
"I had to leave off in a hurry, because the lunch-bell rang. And now
it doesn't seem worth while to go back to that half-written sentence,
about being awfully excited! For it is all over, and I am so dreadfully
disappointed."
"Edred was expected down yesterday for just two nights—all the time he
could spare from his work this Christmas. And Emmeline had asked me to
go to the skating on their pond this afternoon. I think it was to pass
the time before three o'clock that I took to my journal."
"But at lunch my father said a change had come, and a thaw was setting
in. And before we had done, a note arrived from Emmie, telling me that
the ice was unsafe, and that Edred had to hurry back to town to-day. So
this time I shall not even see him."
"It does seem sometimes as if life were all made up of disappointments."
[Illustration]