CHAPTER XII
April is here! Jean and April together! No wonder I haven't any sense!"And the rain it raineth every day," but for just a little while at atime, and the mud smells so good afterward that you don't care. Thewarm air comes blowing through my window so early every morning andputs such sad, happy thoughts into my head that I have to get up andwake Jean. Then we dress and go out into the side yard, where I try tofind a calecanthus in bloom that is really sweet enough to go in frontof Lord Byron's picture. And I try to make Jean listen while I tellher all my sad, happy thoughts, that's what I invited her down herefor, but she hardly ever listens.
"Isn't everything lovely?" I asked her this morning, after we hadtiptoed through the house and out to the side porch. "And doesn'tApril just remind you of a right young girl, about seventeen yearsold, with hair made out of sunshine, and cheeks made ofpeach-blossoms; and eyes made out of that patch of blue sky over Mrs.West's big barn?"
That patch of sky over Mrs. West's barn takes up a heap of my time onsummer afternoons when I lie close to the windows and read. It is sodeep and far-off looking that I get to dreaming about Italy, and Icall it the place where "Tasso's spirit soars and sings." I learnedthis long ago out of the Fifth Reader, and I don't know what elseTasso did besides soaring and singing.
But Jean wasn't listening to me. She had reached out and gathered abunch of snowballs and was shaking the night before's rain off them.
"Oh, Ann," she said, "don't they remind you of willow plumes? Anddon't you wish we were old enough to wear _them_ on our hats insteadof sissy bows? You can get engaged in a minute if you have a willowplume on your hat!"
This seemed to remind her of something, for she spoke again the nextminute.
"Say, I've never told you about Cassius, have I?"
I told her no, although I knew a little about him myself, even if hewasn't in that easy Shakespeare that Lamb wrote for kids. And sheseemed to be lost in thought, so I got lost too. It never is hard forme to. I thought: "Mercy, how I have grown!" When I first commencedkeeping this diary I just despised poetry, and never cared aboutkeeping my hair tied out of my eyes, nor my hands clean. You know thatage! But I soon got over that, for when you get a little bigger beingin love causes you to admire poetry and also to beautify yourself.Jean and I tried very sour buttermilk (the sourer the better) to makeour complexion lovely, with tansy mixed in, until it got so sour thatmother said, "Whew! There must be a rat dead in the walls!" So we hadto pour it out.
In looking over my past life it seems to me that I've been in lovewith somebody or other ever since that night so long ago, when MammyLou washed me and dressed me up in my tiny hemstitched clothes. Andwith such lovely heroes, too! When I was awfully little I used to becrazy about the prince that the mermaid rescued while Hans ChristianAndersen stood on the beach and watched them. Then I loved Ben Hurfrom his pictures when I was ten, John Halifax when I was eleven, LordByron when I was twelve--I loved him then, do now, and ever shall,world without end, Amen! It is so much easier to love _good-looking_people than good ones! And, oh, every handsome young Moor, who everdwelt in "the moonlit halls of the Alhambra!" Washington Irving willhave a heap to answer for in the making of me. And I used to dreamabout "Bonny Prince Charlie," although Miss Wilburn never _could_hammer it into my head which one of the Stuarts he was. And _actors_!Well, I would try to make a list and write it on the fly-pages, onlyit might be a bad example to my grandchildren; then, too, there are sovery few fly-pages.
But I started out to tell how much I've changed since I began thisbook, for now I not only adore poetry, I write it! Fully a quart jarfull I've written since I found the first buttercup this spring. Anode to Venus, an ode to Venice, and a world of just plain odes. MammyLou washed out a preserves jar and put it on my desk for me to stickthem in. It saves trouble for her.
Jean soon woke up out of her brown study and commenced telling aboutCassius.
"I used to meet him on sunshiny mornings going to school," she said."He was about nineteen and so pale and thin and sad-looking that Inamed him 'Cassius.' He walked with a crutch. One morning when thewind blew his hat off I saw that his head was very scholarly looking,so from that hour I began thinking of him every second of the time.That is one of the worst features about being in love, you can't getyour mind off of the person, and if you _do_ it's on to somebody else.Now, just last week I burnt up a great batch of Turkish candy I wastrying to make on account of a person's eyes. They look at you likethey're kissing you!" And she fell again into a study, not a brown onethis time, just a sort of light tan.
"Whose? Cassius's?" I interrupted, shaking her to bring her to.
"Pshaw! No! I had almost forgotten about Cassius! I've never seenanything on earth to equal this other person's eyes! But, anyway,going back to finish up with Cassius, I thought _of course_, from hiswalking with a crutch, that he must have had a bad spinal trouble whenhe was a child and used to have to sit still and be a scholar, insteadof chasing cats and breaking out people's window-panes like healthyboys. I pictured out how lonely he must feel and how he must long fora companion whose mind was equal to his; and it certainly made achanged girl of me! I burnt out gallons and gallons of electricityevery night studying deep things to discuss with him when I should getto know him well."
"How did you know what kind of things he admired?" I asked, for somemen like mathematics and some Dickens and you can't tell thedifference by passing them on the street.
"Well, it did make a heap of extra trouble to me," she answered,sighing as tiredly as if she had been trying on coat suits all day."As I didn't know which was his favorite subject I had to study theencyclopedia so as to be sure to hit it."
"Gee whiz!" I couldn't help saying.
"Oh, that ain't all! I wrote down a list of strange words to say tohim so that he could tell at a glance that I was brilliant. They wereterrific words too, from aortic and actinic in the a's togenuflections in the g's. That's as far as I got."
Mammy Lou called us to breakfast just then, but I could eat only foursoft-boiled guinea eggs, wondering what on earth Cassius had said inreply when Jean said genuflections to him.
"Pshaw! The rest isn't worth telling," she said with a weary look, asI pulled her down on the steps right after breakfast and begged her togo on about Cassius. "It ended with a disappointment--like everythingelse that has a man connected with it! You're a lucky girl to be inlove with Lord Byron so long, for dead men break no hearts!"
"Well, tell it!" I begged.
"Oh, it's too disgusting for words, and was a real blow to a person ofmy nature! The idiot didn't have spinal trouble at all, I learned itfrom a lady who knew his mother. He had only sprained his knee, just aplain, every-day knee, with playing basket-ball at school, which wasall the good school ever did him, the lady said. My life has certainlybeen full of disillusions!"
"But, you've learned what genuflections means," I reminded her, for Ithink people ought to be thankful for everything they learn byexperience, whether it's from an automobile or an auction house.
Pretty soon after this we heard the sound of horses' feet (when I sawwho it was riding them I just couldn't say _hoofs_), so Jean and I ranto the front door. We were very glad when we saw who it was, for if ithadn't been for this couple we should have had little to talk aboutdown here in the country except telling each other our dreams andwhat's good to take off freckles.
It was Miss Irene Campbell riding past our house, with Mr. GeraldFairfax, her twin flame, in swell tan leggins that come to his knee.Miss Irene comes down here sometimes to spend the summer with hergrandmother, Mrs. West. She used to know Mr. Fairfax so well whenthey were little that there were always several planks off of thefence so they could visit together without going all the way around tothe gate. But he grew up and went one direction and she went anotherand they didn't see each other again until late last summer; but theysaw each other then, oh, so often! And they found that they must betwin flames from the way their "temperaments accord."
I had heard D
octor Gordon say that I was of a nervous temperament andwas wondering whether or not this was the kind you could have a twinflame with; but father says the temperament that Mr. Fairfax and MissIrene have is what makes affinities throw skillets at each other afterthey've been married two weeks. But these two are not going to marry,for their friendship is of the _spirit_. They talk about incarnationsand "Karma," which sounds like the name of a salve to me. Sometimes heseems to like her looks as much as her soul, and says she's a typicalmaid of Andalusia. I learned about Andalusia out of Washington Irvingtoo, so I know he thinks she's pretty. She has some splendid traits ofcharacter, mother says, which means I reckon that she doesn't fix herhair idiotically just because other women do, nor use enough violetsachet to out-smell an automobile.
Miss Irene is very sad, both on account of her liver and her lover.Mrs. West says the books she reads are enough to give anybody livercomplaint, but she has had a disappointment lately that is enough togive her appendicitis.
His name is Doctor Bynum and he's as handsome as Apollo and abacteriologist, which is worse than a prohibitionist, for while thelast-named won't let you drink whisky in peace, the other won't letyou drink water in peace. Still, Miss Irene says he has the mosthonest brown eyes and the warmest, most comfortable-feeling hands sheever saw and she was beginning to love him in spite of their soulsbeing on different planes.
"He doesn't care for _one line_ in literature," she told mother, whois very fond of her and would like to see her settled in life. "I'vetried him on everything from Marcus Aurelius to Gray's _Elegy_. When Igot to this last he said, 'Good Lord! Eliminate it! It's my businessto keep folks _out_ of the churchyard instead of droning ditties afterthey're in it!' Now, do you call that anything short of savage?"
"I call it sensible," mother told her.
"But I hate sensible people--with _no_ nonsense."
"Oh, nonsense is necessary to the digestion," mother answered quickly,"we all know _that_. But a little sense, now and then, it takes to paythe market men."
"Which, being interpreted, means that you're like grandmother. Youhope I'll marry Doctor Bynum, but you greatly fear that it will beGerald Fairfax!"
"All I have to say is that 'The Raven' is not a good fowl to roast fordinner," mother answered, with a twinkle in her eye, for Jean had comehome from Mrs. West's the day before and said that Mr. Fairfax hadbeen reading _The Raven_ so real you were afraid it would fly down andpeck your eyes out.
"Oh, Gerald and I don't believe in flesh foods!" she said loftily,then added quickly, "but I'm not going to marry _him_. Neither am Igoing to marry a man who calls my reincarnation theory 'bug-housetalk.' I came away down here the very day after he said that, withouttelling him good-by or anything. And I'm just disappointed to deaththat he has not followed me long ago. I thought sure he would!"
"You don't deserve that he should ever think of you again," mothertold her, looking as severe as she does when she tells me I'll neverget married on earth unless I learn to be more tidy.
"I confess the 'conflicting doubts and opinions' _do_ give meindigestion. Doctor Bynum has the most good-looking face I ever saw.And he's just lovely when he isn't perfectly hateful, and--mercy me! Ithink I'll get Mammy Lou to give me a spoonful of soda in a glass ofwarm water. I have an awful heaviness around my heart!"
This talk took place two or three days ago and we hadn't seen heragain until this morning when she came riding past our house. Theywaved at us as they got even with our gate and turned off the mainroad to the little path that leads to the prettiest part of the woods.
"Jean, what would you do if Mr. Fairfax looked at you the way he looksat her?" I asked, as we sat down and fixed ourselves to watch them outof sight.
"I'd marry him quicker than you could hiccough!" she answered, gazingafter them with a yearning look. "What would you do?"
"I don't know," I told her, and I don't. "Some people seem to be happyeven after they're married, but I think it would be nice to be likeDante and Beatrice, with no gas bills nor in-laws to bother you."
"Shoo! Well, I bet she marries him in spite of all that talk about thespirit. A spirit is all right to marry if he smells like good cigarsand is _on the spot_!"
"Yes, I'm afraid Doctor Bynum has lost his chance; for a girl willlove the nearest man--when the lilies-of-the-valley are in bloom."
"But I heard Mrs. West say the other day that Mr. Fairfax would make amighty bad husband, in spite of the good looks and deep voice. He'dalways forget when the oatmeal was out."
"Yes," I answered, "I heard her tell mother the other day that shewould leave all she had to somebody else if she did marry him, for shebelieved in every married couple there ought to be at least one thathad sense enough to keep the fences mended up."
"Why, that old lady's mind is as narrow as a ready-made nightgown,"Jean exclaimed in surprise. "Why, affinities marry in every page ofthe pink Sunday papers!"
"But really who _does_ make the living?" I asked, for I had heardmother say that that kind of folks never worked.
"The lawyer that divo'ces 'em makes the livin'," Mammy Lou said then,popping her black head out through mother's white curtains. "An' themtwo, if they marries, will fu'nish him with sev'al square meals! I'veknowed 'em both sence they secon' summer," she said, a brown fingerpointing in the direction they had gone, and a smile coming over herface, for second summers are to old women what war times are to oldmen, only more so. "I said it then and I say it now, he's too pore!Across the chist! He thinks too much, which ain't no 'count. It leadsto _devilment_! Folks ain't got no business thinkin'--they ought to goto sleep when they're through work!"
"But his sympathy----" I started, for that's what Miss Irene isalways talking about, but mammy interrupted me.
"Sympathy nothin'! How much sympathy do you reckon he'd have on afreezin' mornin' with wet kin'lin' and the stovepipe done fell down?She better look out for a easy-goin' man that ain't carin' 'boutnothin' 'cept how to keep the barn full o' corn and good shoes forseven or eight chil'en!"
Mammy Lou mostly knows what's she talking about, but somehow I hate tothink of Miss Irene with seven children. She reminds me so much of aflower. When I stop to think of it, all the girls I've written aboutremind me of flowers. Cousin Eunice is like a lovely iris, and AnnLisbeth is like a Marechal Niel rose. Miss Cis Reeves used to looklike a bright, happy little pansy, but that was before the twins wereborn. Now her collar to her shirtwaist always hikes up in the back andshows the skin underneath and her hat (whenever she gets a chance toput on a hat) is over one ear, and lots of times she looks like shewishes nobody in her family ever had been born, especially the twinthat cries the loudest.
When I told Miss Irene that she reminded me of a flower, she saidwell, it must be the jasmine flower, or something else like a funeral,for she was as desolate as everybody was in _Ben Bolt_. (I alwayswondered why they didn't bury "Sweet Alice" with the rest of herfamily instead of in a corner obscure and alone.) I told her then justto pacify her that maybe she would feel better after she got marriedone way or another and stopped reading books named _The Callof_----all sorts of things, and thinking that she had to answer allthe calls. Cousin Eunice says her only troubles in matrimony werestomach and eye teeth and frozen water-pipes. She never gets disgustedwith life except on nights when Rufe goes to the lodge to see thethird degree administered. She can even write a few articles now ifshe gives Waterloo a pan of water and a wash-rag to play with, butshe says many of her brightest thoughts never were fountain-pennedbecause he happened to squall in the midst of them.
For the last few days Mr. Fairfax has been riding around the countrylooking for a little cabin where he can be by himself and fish andread Schopenhauer. I imagine from what they've read before me that hemust be the man who wrote the post-cards you send to newly engagedcouples saying, "Cheer up! The worst is yet to come!"
Mr. Fairfax says the blue smoke will curl up from his cabin chimney atsunset and form a "symphony in color" against the green tree-tops; andhe can lead the "untrammel
ed life." He is begging Miss Irene to go andlead it with him, I'm sure; and she's half a mind to do it, but can'tbear the _thoughts_ of it when she remembers Doctor Bynum's eyes andhands. Altogether the poor girl looks as uncertain as if she waswalking on a pavement covered with banana peelings.
I think the blue-smoke-cabin idea is very romantic, but when Imentioned it to Mammy Lou she got mad and jerked the skillet off thestove so suddenly that the grease popped out and burnt her finger.
"Blue smoke! Blue _blazes_!" she said, walloping her dish-rag aroundand around in it. "I hope that pretty critter ain't goin' to be tookin by no such talk as that! Blue smoke curlin'! Well, _she'll_ be theone to make the fire that curls it!"
It's a good thing that father gave me a fountain pen on my lastbirthday, for I should hate to write what happened last night with adull pencil.
Mrs. West had invited Jean and me to spend the night at her house, forMiss Irene was feeling worse and worse and needed something light tocheer her up. Well, it was just long enough after supper for us to bewishing that we hadn't eaten so many strawberries when Mr. Fairfaxcame up the walk looking as grand and gloomy as Edgar Allan Poe, rightafter he had written a poem to his mother-in-law. He said let's take awalk in the moonlight for the air was _madding_. I always thoughtbefore it was _maddening_, and should be applied only to nuisances,like your next-door neighbor's children, or the piano in the flatabove you; but I saw from the dictionary and the way he acted later onthat he was right, both about the word and the way he applied it.
Not far down the road from Mrs. West's front gate is a very old-timeyschool-house, so dilapidated that Jean says she knows it's the onewhere the little girl said to the little boy, forty years ago:
"I'm sorry that I spelt the word, I hate to go above you; Because," the brown eyes lower fell; "Because, you see, I love you!"
Jean didn't mean a bit of harm when she quoted it, but the sound ofthat last line made them look as shivery as if they had malaria. Wesoon found a nice place and sat down on a log that looked less likesnakes than the others, and when we saw that there wasn't quite roomenough for us all Jean and I had the politeness to go away out ofhearing and find another log, over closer to the road. Even then wecould hear, for the night was so still and we were so busy with ourthoughts.
I began thinking: What if _I_ should have such a hard time to find alover that is sympathetic and systematic at the same time? Suppose SirReginald de Beverley isn't sympathetic about Lord Byron! Suppose helikes his parliamentary speeches better than his poetry, like onehusband of a lady that I know does!
But my mind was diverted just then by hearing words coming from thedirection of Miss Irene and Mr. Fairfax so much like the little girlsaid to the little boy forty years ago that I was astonished. I hadbeen told that a girl could always keep a man from proposing when shewanted to! But he was saying that she _should_ come with him and leadthe untrammeled life, and she was looking pleased and frightened andwas telling him to hush, but was letting him go on; and they were bothstanding up and holding hands in the moonlight.
"I'm not at all sure it's the untrammeled life I'm looking for," shesaid in little catchy breaths; "but I'm so wretched! And you're theonly one who cares! I suppose I may as well--oh, I wish I had somebodyhere to keep me from acting an idiot!"
Now, if Shakespeare or "The Duchess" had written this story they wouldhave pretended that Doctor Bynum came around the curve in the road atthat very minute and taking off his hat said: "Nay, you shall be mywife!"
But it was only Mrs. West coming down the road, carrying a heavycrocheted shawl to keep Miss Irene from catching her death of cold!But listen! The minute we got back to the house the telephone bellrang and it was a long-distance call for Miss Irene. She knew in a_second_ from the city it was from that Doctor Bynum was at the otherend of the line. She looked at that telephone like a person in thefourth story of a house afire looks at the hook-and-ladder man.
Mr. Fairfax said well, he must be going; and we all got out on theporch while she and Doctor Bynum made up their quarrel at the rate oftwo dollars for the first three minutes and seventy-five cents aminute extra. (I know because father sometimes talks to that cityabout cotton.) And he's coming down Sunday. And Jean and I are holdingour breath.
We're having the very last fire of the season to-night! A big,booming, beautiful one that makes you think winter wasn't such a badtime after all! A cold spell has come, and oh, it is so cold! It makesyou wonder how it had the heart to come now and cause the flowers tofeel so out of place. But it has also caused us to have another fireand I love a fire. I even like to make them, and lots of times I tellDilsey to let me build the fire in my room myself. I sit down on thehearth and sit and _sit_, building that fire. Then I get to lookinginto it and thinking. Thinking is a mighty bad habit, like Mammy Lousays.
I can't do this any more though--for to-night we're having the lastfire of the season. To-morrow spring cleaning will be gone throughwith and the chimneys all newspapered up. No matter how cold it getsafter _that_ you can't expect to have a fire after you've _sprungcleaned_! I never _am_ going to spring clean at my house. The dust andsoapsuds are not the worst part of house cleaning, though they are badenough, goodness knows! What I hate worst to see is the battered oldbureaus and shabby old quilts that you've kept a secret from thepublic for years pulled out from their corners by the hair of theirheads and knocked around in the back yard without any pity for theirpoor old bones! I never see a moving van going through the citystreets loaded with pitiful old furniture without thinking "That usedto be _somebody's_ Lares and Penates!"
By-the-way, Mammy Lou is crazy for Dovie to have some more twins soshe can name them "Scylla and Chrybdis." She hasn't much hopes though,for she says lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place. Fathersays it wouldn't be lightning, it would be _thunder_ to have two morelittle pickaninnies always standing around under his feet and have toexplain to everybody that came along how they got their curious names.
Mammy Lou heard Miss Irene say "Scylla and Chrybdis;" Miss Irenedoesn't say it any more though. Doctor Bynum didn't wait for the trainto bring him down here that Sunday, but whizzed through the country inhis automobile Saturday night. Then he "venied, vidied, vicied" insuch a hurry that everybody in town knew it before nap time Sundayafternoon. Mr. Fairfax has gone away on a long trip. Jean said if hehad had any sense he would have seen that Miss Irene Campbell wasn'tthe only girl in the world, but he didn't see it and he's gone.
Next week Jean is going home and when I think of how lonesome I'll besomething nearly pops inside of me. They have been writing and writingfor me to go home with Jean and stay until Rufe and Cousin Eunice andWaterloo get ready to come down this summer, but mother says I may notgo unless Jean and I both promise to reform. We're not to eat any morestuffed olives nor write any more poetry--and, _think_ of it! I'm tostop writing in _my diary_! Mother says I'll never have any practicalsense if I don't begin now to learn things. I tell her, "Am I to blameif I love a fountain pen better than a darning needle?" The Lord mademe so. And I _hate_ sewing. It's as hard for me to sew as it is tokeep from writing.
Yet if I go home with Jean I must quit writing. Must give up mydiary. Must not write one line of poetry, no matter how much my headis buzzing with it! Why, if poets couldn't _write_ their poetry they'dburst a blood vessel! I can't even take you with me to Jean's houseand read over what I have written in happier days, you poor littleforsaken diary!
The Annals of Ann Page 12