January First.
Aunt Jemima gave me this diary for a Christmas present. It's just the
sort of gift a person named Jemima would be likely to make.
I can't imagine why Aunt Jemima thought I should like a diary.
Probably she didn't think about it at all. I suppose it happened to be
the first thing she saw when she started out to do her Christmas duty
by me, and so she bought it. I'm sure I'm the last girl in the world
to keep a diary. I'm not a bit sentimental and I never have time for
soul outpourings. It's jollier to be out skating or snowshoeing or
just tramping around. And besides, nothing ever happens to me worth
writing in a diary.
Still, since Aunt Jemima gave it to me, I'm going to get the good out
of it. I don't believe in wasting even a diary. Father ... it would be
easier to write "Dad," but Dad sounds disrespectful in a diary ...
says I have a streak of old Grandmother Marshall's economical nature
in me. So I'm going to write in this book whenever I have anything
that might, by any stretch of imagination, be supposed worth while.
Jen and Alice and Sue would have plenty to write about, I dare say.
They certainly seem to have jolly times ... and as for the men ... but
there! People say men are interesting. They may be. But I shall never
get well enough acquainted with any of them to find out.
Mother says it is high time I gave up my tomboy ways and came "out"
too, because I am eighteen. I coaxed off this winter. It wasn't very
hard, because no mother with three older unmarried girls on her hands
would be very anxious to bring out a fourth. The girls took my part
and advised Mother to let me be a child as long as possible. Mother
yielded for this time, but said I must be brought out next winter or
people would talk. Oh, I hate the thought of it! People might talk
about my not being brought out, but they will talk far more about the
blunders I shall make.
The doleful fact is, I'm too wretchedly shy and awkward to live. It
fills my soul with terror to think of donning long dresses and putting
my hair up and going into society. I can't talk and men frighten me to
death. I fall over things as it is, and what will it be with long
dresses? As far back as I can remember it has been my one aim and
object in life to escape company. Oh, if only one need never grow up!
If I could only go back four years and stay there!
Mother laments over it muchly. She says she doesn't know what she has
done to have such a shy, unpresentable daughter. _I_ know. She married
Grandmother Marshall's son, and Grandmother Marshall was as shy as she
was economical. Mother triumphed over heredity with Jen and Sue and
Alice, but it came off best with me. The other girls are noted for
their grace and tact. But I'm the black sheep and always will be. It
wouldn't worry me so much if they'd leave me alone and stop nagging
me. "Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness," where there were no
men, no parties, no dinners ... just quantities of dogs and horses and
skating ponds and woods! I need never put on long dresses then, but
just be a jolly little girl forever.
However, I've got one beautiful year before me yet, and I mean to make
the most of it.
* * * * *
January Tenth.
It is rather good to have a diary to pour out your woes in when you
feel awfully bad and have no one to sympathize with you. I've been
used to shutting them all up in my soul and then they sometimes
fermented and made trouble.
We had a lot of people here to dinner tonight, and that made me
miserable to begin with. I had to dress up in a stiff white dress
_with a sash_, and Jen tied two big white fly-away bows on my hair
that kept rasping my neck and tickling my ears in a most exasperating
way. Then an old lady whom I detest tried to make me talk before
everybody, and all I could do was to turn as red as a beet and
stammer: "Yes, ma'am," "no, ma'am." It made Mother furious, because it
is so old-fashioned to say "ma'am." Our old nurse taught me to say it
when I was small, and though it has been pretty well governessed out
of me since then, it's sure to pop up when I get confused and nervous.
Sue ... may it be accounted unto her for righteousness ... contrived
that I should go out to dinner with old Mr. Grant, because she knew he
goes to dinners for the sake of eating and never talks or wants
anybody else to. But when we were crossing the hall I stepped on Mrs.
Burnett's train and something tore. Mrs. Burnett gave me a furious
look and glowered all through dinner. The meal was completely spoiled
for me and I could find no comfort, even in the Nesselrode pudding,
which is my favourite dessert.
It was just when the pudding came on that I got the most unkindest cut
of all. Mrs. Allardyce remarked that Sidney Elliot was coming home to
Stillwater.
Everybody exclaimed and questioned and seemed delighted. I saw Mother
give one quick, involuntary look at Jen, and then gaze steadfastly at
Mr. Grant to atone for it. Jen is twenty-six, and Stillwater is next
door to our place!
As for me, I was so vexed that I might as well have been eating chips
for all the good that Nesselrode pudding was to me. If Sidney Elliot
were coming home everything would be spoiled. There would be no more
ramblings in the Stillwater woods, no more delightful skating on the
Stillwater lake. Stillwater has been the only place in the world where
I could find the full joy of solitude, and now this, too, was to be
taken from me. We had no woods, no lake. I hated Sidney Elliot.
It is ten years since Sidney Elliot closed Stillwater and went abroad.
He has stayed abroad ever since and nobody has missed him, I'm sure. I
remember him dimly as a tall dark man who used to lounge about alone
in his garden and was always reading books. Sometimes he came into our
garden and teased us children. He is said to be a cynic and to detest
society. If this latter item be a fact I almost feel a grim pity for
him. He may detest it, but he will be dragged into it. Rich bachelors
are few and far between in Riverton, and the mammas will hunt him
down.
I feel like crying. If Sidney Elliot comes home I shall be debarred
from Stillwater. I have roamed its demesnes for ten beautiful years,
and I'm sure I love them a hundredfold better than he does, or can. It
is flagrantly unfair. Oh, I hate him!
* * * * *
January Twentieth.
No, I don't. I believe I like him. Yet it's almost unbelievable. I've
always thought men so detestable.
I'm tingling all over with the surprise and pleasure of a little
unexpected adventure. For the first time I have something really worth
writing in a diary ... and I'm glad I have a diary to write it in.
Blessings on Aunt Jemima! May her shadow never grow less.
This evening I started out for a last long lingering ramble in my
beloved Stillwater woods. The last, I thought, because I knew Sidney
Elliot was expected home next week, and after that I'd have to be
cooped up on our lawn. I dressed myself comfortably for climbing
fences and skimming over snowy wastes. That is, I put on the shortest
old tweed skirt I have and a red jacket with sleeves three years
behind the fashion, but jolly pockets to put your hands in, and a
still redder tam. Thus accoutred, I sallied forth.
It was such a lovely evening that I couldn't help enjoying myself in
spite of my sorrows. The sun was low and creamy, and the snow was so
white and the shadows so slender and blue. All through the lovely
Stillwater woods was a fine frosty stillness. It was splendid to skim
down those long wonderful avenues of crusted snow, with the mossy grey
boles on either hand, and overhead the lacing, leafless boughs, I
just drank in the air and the beauty until my very soul was thrilling,
and I went on and on and on until I was most delightfully lost. That
is, I didn't know just where I was, but the woods weren't so big but
that I'd be sure to come out safely somewhere; and, oh, it was so
glorious to be there all alone and never a creature to worry me.
At last I turned into a long aisle that seemed to lead right out into
the very heart of a deep-red overflowing winter sunset. At its end I
found a fence, and I climbed up on that fence and sat there, so
comfortably, with my back against a big beech and my feet dangling.
Then I saw him!
I knew it was Sidney Elliot in a moment. He was just as tall and just
as black-eyed; he was still given to lounging evidently, for he was
leaning against the fence a panel away from me and looking at me with
an amused smile. After my first mad impulse to rush away and bury
myself in the wilderness that smile put me at ease. If he had looked
grave or polite I would have been as miserably shy as I've always been
in a man's presence. But it was the smile of a grandfather for a
child, and I just grinned cheerfully back at him.
He ploughed along through the thick drift that was soft and spongy by
the fence and came close up to me.
"You must be little Cornelia," he said with another aged smile. "Or
rather, you _were_ little Cornelia. I suppose you are big Cornelia now
and want to be treated like a young lady?"
"Indeed, I don't," I protested. "I'm not grown up and I don't want to
be. You are Mr. Elliot, I suppose. Nobody expected you till next week.
What made you come so soon?"
"A whim of mine," he said. "I'm full of whims and crotchets. Old
bachelors always are. But why did you ask that question in a tone
which seemed to imply that you resented my coming so soon, Miss
Cornelia?"
"Oh, don't tack the Miss on," I implored. "Call me Cornelia ... or
better still, Nic, as Dad does. I _do_ resent your coming so soon. I
resent your coming at all. And, oh, it is such a satisfaction to tell
you so."
He smiled with his eyes ... a deep, black, velvety smile. But he shook
his head sorrowfully.
"I must be getting very old," he said. "It's a sign of age when a
person finds himself unwelcome and superfluous."
"Your age has nothing to do with it," I retorted. "It is because
Stillwater is the only place I have to run wild in ... and running
wild is all I'm fit for. It's so lovely and roomy I can lose myself in
it. I shall die or go mad if I'm cooped up on our little pocket
handkerchief of a lawn."
"But why should you be?" he inquired gravely.