Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
THE ANNALS OF ANN
[Illustration: Ann]
The Annals of Ann
_By_ KATE TRIMBLE SHARBER
WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
BY PAUL J. MEYLAN
A. L. BURT COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT 1910
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
THE ANNALS OF ANN
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 shore 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 bump
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 class by speaking up again
and saying, "Well, me don't believe it!"
Old as I am now, I don't see how Jonah's constitution 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 aprons 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-glass 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 buttermilk, and Cousin Eunice was
drinking glass after glass 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 glassful. "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.
"Hello, 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 buttermilk 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 apron. 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.
"But the night she came you called Bertha a _kitten_!" I reminded him,
and he looked worse surprised. "And since I've heard her called a
_cat_! How long does it take a kitten to grow into a cat?"
"Oh, I see! Well, I'm better versed in feline ways now than I was that
night; so I might state that sometimes you discover that a kitten is a
cat! There isn't any difference!"
We heard a clattering noise behind the vines just then, which I knew
was Bertha dropping her embroidery scissors. Rufe jumped, for he had
no idea anybody was hearing our conversation; and I know he wouldn't
have said what he did about cats except he _thought_ I was too little
to understand such figures of speech. Then he got up to go in and see
who it was. And I decided to disappear around the corner of the house.
I didn't altogether disappear before I heard her say indeed he _had_
meant to call her a cat; and he said indeed he hadn't, but she hadn't
been "square" with him, and they talked and talked until I got uneasy
that Cousin Eunice would be coming through the hall and hear them. So
I hurried on back to head her off. But Satan, or whoever it was, put
me up to a good job in that, for the next time I saw Rufe he was
wearing his fraternity pin and a happy smile. And Bertha had red spots
on her face, even as late as dinner-time, like consumption that lovely
heroines die of.
I've been too disappointed lately to write in my diary. Somehow, I
think like Rufe, that there's only one thing worth writing about, and
there's been very little in that line going on around here lately.
Poor Rufe is having a harder time now than he had when Bertha was on
his hands, for Cousin Eunice has taken it into her head to show him
that she doesn't have to accept him the minute he gets untangled from
a summer flirtation. Those were her very words.
She and I go for long walks with him every morning, down through the
ravine; and they read poetry that sounds so good you feel like
somebody's scratching your back. And she wears her best-fitting
shirtwaists. One good thing about Cousin Eunice is that her clothes
never look like she'd sat up late the night before to make them. And
when she's expecting him at night her eyes shine like they had been
greased; and I can tell from the way she breathes quick when she hears
the gate open that she loves him. Yes, she adores the sound of his
rubber heels on the front porch; but she won't give in to him. She's
punishing him for the Bertha part of it. Mother says she's very
foolish, for men will be men, especially on nights in June; but Mammy
Lou says she's exactly right; and I reckon mammy knows best, for she's
been married a heap more times than mother ever has.
"The longer you keep a man feelin' like he's on a red-hot stove the
better he loves you," Mammy Lou told Cousin Eunice to-night, as she
was powdering her face for the last time before going down-stairs and
trying to keep us from seeing that she was listening for a footstep on
the gravel walk. "An' a husban's got to be treated jus' like a lover!
A good, heavy poker's a fine thing to make a husban' know 'is
place--an' Lawk! a lazy husban's like a greasy churn--you have to give
him a thorough scaldin' to do any good!"
This morning at the breakfast table, after father had helped the
plates to chicken, saving two gizzards for me, he said: "Times have
changed since I was a young man!"
As this wasn't exactly the first time we had heard such a remark none
of us paid any attention to it until we saw mother trying to make him
hush. Then we knew he must be starting to say something funny about
Cousin Eunice and Rufe, for mother always stops him on this subject
whenever she can, because she doesn't want Bertha's feelings hurt. But
Bertha never seems to mind. She's decided to marry the commercial
traveler, I'm almost sure, although her people say he's not "steady."
Steady means staying still, so who ever heard of a traveling man who
was steady?
"Times have changed, especially about courting," father kept on,
pretending that he didn't see mother shaking her head at him. When
father gets that twinkle in his eye he can't see anything else. "Now
in _my_ young days when a girl and a fellow looked good to each other
they usually got engaged at once. But _now_--jumping Jerusalem! No
matter how deeply in love they are they waste days and days trying to
get a 'complete understanding' of each other's nature. They talk about
their opinion of everything under the sun, from woman's suffrage to
Belshazzar's feast."
"Lord Byron wrote a piece in the Fifth Reader about Belshazzar's
feast," I started to remark, but I remembered in time to hush, for
I've never been able to mention Lord Byron's name to my family in any
peace since they found that I keep a vase of flowers in front of his
picture all the time. They call him my _beau_--the beautiful creature!
Father didn't notice my remark, however. He was too busy with his
own. "And instead of exchanging locks of hair, as they used to when
Mary and I were young, they give each other limp-backed books that
have 'helped to shape their career,' and beg that they will mark the
passages that impress _them_!"
"Uncle Dan, you've been eavesdropping!" Cousin Eunice said, looking up
from her hot biscuit and honey long enough to smile at him, but she
didn't quit eating. It has got out of style to stop eating when you're
in love, for a man admires a healthy-looking girl. I know a young man
who had been going to see a girl for a long time and never did
propose. She was a pretty girl, too, slender and wild-rosy-looking.
Well, she took a trip to Germany one summer and drank so much of
_something_ fattening over there that the wild-rose look changed to
American beauty; and when she came home in the fall the young man was
so delighted with her looks that he turned in and married her before
Christmas!
Cousin Eunice knows these people too, and she does all she can to keep
her digestion good, even to fresh milk and raw eggs. I hope _I_ can
get married without the raw eggs part of it. And she tramps all over
the woods for the sake of her appetite in stylish-looking tan boots.
As we left the dining-room I noticed that she had on her walking-boots
and a short skirt, so I thought Rufe would be along pretty soon for us
to go down to the ravine and read poetry. They always take me along
because I soon get enough of the poetry and go off to wade in the
branch, leaving them on their favorite big gray rock.
Sure enough, Rufe wasn't long about coming, and I saw that his
limp-backed book was labeled "Keats" this morning. Cousin Eunice
didn't have a book. She carried a parasol. A parasol is used to jab
holes in the sand when you're being made love to.
I don't know why I should have felt so, but just as soon as they got
started to reading this morning I had a curious feeling, like you
have when the lights burn low on the stage and the orchestra begins
_The Flower Song_. The way they looked at each other made under my
scalp tingle. Now, if I ever have a granddaughter that doesn't have
this feeling in the presence of _great_ things I shall disinherit her
and leave my diamonds to a society for tuberculosis or pure food or
fresh air, or some of those charitable things.
[Illustration: Jabbing holes in the sand with her parasol _Page 26_]
Before long they branched off from Keats to Shelley, and Rufe didn't
need a book with him. Just after he had finished a little verse
beginning, "I can not give what men call love," I had sense enough to
get up and go away from them. Although I have always been crazy to see
a proposal, there was something in the atmosphere around that old gray
rock that made me feel as if I were treading on sacred ground. (I hate
to use expressions like this, that everybody else uses, but I can't
think of anything else and it's getting too late to sit here by myself
and try.) Anyhow it's the feeling you have when you go into a
cathedral with stained glass windows. So I went away from them, but
not very far away, just a little distance, to where I have a lovely
pile of moss collected on the north side of a big tree. And the
smotheration around my heart kept up.
It seemed to me the _longest_ time before anything happened, for
Cousin Eunice was jabbing holes in the sand with her parasol like she
was being paid to do it by the hour. Finally, without any ado, he put
his hands on hers and made her stop.
"Sweetheart," I heard him say, so low that I could hardly hear, for
_The Flower Song_ was buzzing through my head so loud. Then he seemed
to remember me for he looked around, and, seeing that I was _clear_
gone, he said it again, "Sweetheart." She looked up at him when he
said it, and looked and _looked_! Maybe she never had realized before
just how big and broad-shouldered and brown-eyed Rufe really is!
Neither one of them said anything, but he put both arms around her;
and when I saw that they were going to kiss I shut my eyes right tight
and stopped up my ears and buried my face in the pile of moss. Even
then I never felt so much like a yellow dog in my life!