Chapter 8 No.8

Ever since my last birthday there has a great change come over me for I have not kept my diary. Mother took me to one side that morning and said it was time for me to act like I was growing up now. She said many a girl as big as me could pick a chicken and I couldn't do a thing but write a diary; and would even run and stop up my ears every time Mammy Lou started to wring one's head off.

She said all the ladies of the neighborhood nearly worried her to death advising her to teach me how to work and saying it was simply ridiculous for a great big girl like me to lie flat on her stomach reading a book all day in the grass. This shows how I am misunderstood by my family, and I told mother so, but she said for goodness' sake not to get that idea into my head, for girls that were always complaining about being "misunderstood" were the kind that got divorces from their husbands afterward. I know this won't be the way with me, though, for I expect to live on good terms with Sir Reginald, always wearing pink satin and spangles even around the castle; and never getting mussy-looking when I give the children a bath in hopes of retaining his affections, like they tell you to in ladies' magazines. But I didn't mention Sir Reginald to mother, or she would have misunderstood me worse than ever.

Goodness! I reckon the neighbors would have a fit if they could see me of a night when I dress up and step out on the porch roof, making like I'm Juliet in Shakespeare. I wear a lace thing over my head and let a pair of Cousin Eunice's last year's bedroom slippers represent Romeo with fur around the top. They are the kind he wore the night they took me to see him and are all I can find in the house that looks at all like him. Nobody gets to see me doing this, though, for I lock the door. Somehow I think it would be a nicer world if you could always lock the door on your advising friends.

Last summer Rufe said I was so clever for my age (he said) that I ought to be in the city (I like this kind of advice) at a good school; so father and mother decided to move to the city and take Mammy Lou and spend the winter and all the other winters until I could get educated and live in a flat. So we went, me writing much sorry poetry about leaving my old home. The older I get the more I think of poetry and I reckon by the time I'm engaged I'll be crazy about it!

Our leaving was very sad, poor little Lares and Penates crying so hard at the depot where they went to tell Mammy Lou good-by that a drummer who was traveling with a kind heart gave them a quarter apiece to hush.

I never admired the name of flat from the first and when we started to rent one I admired it less than ever. It consists of a very large house, divided up, and no place to kill a chicken. There is also no place to warm your feet, nor to pop corn. In fact, there are more places where you can't do things than where you can. Rufe took us to every one in town nearly, and mammy paid particular attention to how the kitchens were fixed and asked what became of the potato peelings with no pigs to eat them up. Finally, after everything had been explained to her, she spoke up in the midst of a lady's flat with tears in her eyes and said:

"Mis' Mary, le's go back to the country whar slop is called slop; up here it's 'gawbage!'"

Father and mother were both delighted that going back had been mentioned without either one of them saying it first, for both of their feet were sore from looking for flats; and they like to have fallen over each other in agreeing with mammy.

"God never intended for human beings to live in flats," father said, after the elevator had put us down on dry land once more, drawing a deep breath.

"Nor in cities either," Rufe agreed, with a far-away look in his eyes, like he might be thinking of the chestnut hunts and black haws of his boyhood.

That night they said well, they had found out they couldn't live in the city, and they weren't going to be separated from me, and I had to be educated; so Rufe then told them that a governess was the next best thing. This sounded so much like a young girl in a book that at first I was delighted. A governess is a very clean person that always expects you to be the same. Only in books they are usually drab-colored young ladies without any nice clothes or parents, but the son of the family falls in love with them, much to their surprise, and they lose their job. Then the son gets sent away to India with his regiment, where he hopes he can meet sweet death through a bullet hole. This is the way they are in books.

Mine, though, is not anything like that, being very pretty and pink, and with a regular father and mother like other folks have. But there is a great mystery connected with her. Don't anybody but me know about it, and I don't know all about it. From the very first she seemed to have something on her mind; this is very unusual for a young girl, so I tried to find out what the cause of it was. One day at the dinner table when she had been here about two weeks father remarked that I was learning faster from her than I ever had, and he hoped that she would stay here with us until I was finished being educated and not be wanting to get married, like most young ladies. Miss Wilburn, instead of laughing as one would expect, turned red in the face (her first name is Louise) and said something that sounded like "Oh no!"

Mammy, who was in the room at the time, spoke up as she usually does and said well, there must be something wrong with her if she didn't want to marry, as all right-minded women married once and extra smart ones married as often as there was any occasion to! Instead of smiling Miss Wilburn looked more painful than ever; so mammy, who thinks enough of her to even do up her shirtwaists, changed the subject.

That night when I went into the kitchen to talk to mammy during the cooking her mind was still on the subject of Miss Wilburn and marrying.

"Honey," she said to me, flipping over the cakes with great conviction, "I've been thinking it over and the long and short of it is that pore child's been fooled! I know them symptoms! She's been fooled and she's grievin' over it. Though thar ain't no use for a woman to grieve over nary one man so long's she under forty and got good front teeth!"

I said oh, I hoped not. I hated to think about the lover of my governess proving false! I told mammy maybe he had just died or something else he couldn't help. But she interrupted me.

"Died nothin'! That ain't no excuse, for thar's allus time to marry no matter what you're fixin' to do. Thar ain't nothin' no excuse for not marryin' in this world," she kept on, "be it male or female. You needn't be settin' thar swingin' your legs and arguin' with me about the holy estate!"

The very first minute I thought there was anything of a loving nature connected with Miss Wilburn I got out my diary to write it down, as you see. She had told mother anyhow to let me keep it as it would "stimulate my mental faculties" and they would never be able to make a chicken-picking person out of me. I'm going to keep it right here in the drawer and jot down everything I see, although I am convinced that the lover is dead. Julius and Marcella are down here now for the first time since they were married. We see them a great deal, for they love to go walking through the woods with Miss Wilburn and me; but I can't waste my diary writing about them now.

I just happened to think what a pity it was that I didn't try to find out the mystery about Miss Wilburn from Rufe and Cousin Eunice when we was up there last summer, for they knew her real well before we got her. In fact, for the first few days she and I didn't have any congenial things to talk about except them and tiny Waterloo. Waterloo's little name by rights is Rufus Clayborne, Junior, and he occurred at a time when I wasn't keeping my diary; but my grandchildren would have known about him anyhow, he being their little fifth cousin. He is very different from Bertha's baby, for he is a boy. I thought when I first saw him that if there was anything sweeter in this world than a girl baby it is a boy one!

Rufe and Cousin Eunice have lately been kinder New Thought persons, which think if you have "poise" enough there can't anything on earth conquer you. Rufe bragged particularly about nothing being able to conquer him or get him in a bad temper, he had so much poise. But when little Rufus was just three nights old and he had walked him the other two and he was still squalling he threw up his job.

"Poise be hanged!" Cousin Eunice told us he said, "I've met my Waterloo!" And they've called him that ever since.

When we were up there in the summer Waterloo was giving his father considerable trouble about the editorials. An editorial is a smart remark opposite the society column; and Rufe couldn't think up smart things while he was squalling.

"Oh, for a desert island!" he said one night when he was awful busy and couldn't get anything done. "Oh, for a mammoth haystack where I might thrust my head to drown the noise-I've read that Jean Jacques Rousseau used to do so! Listen, I've made a rhyme!"

"'Tis not rhymes but dimes we need most just now; so go on with your work," Cousin Eunice said, gathering Waterloo together to take him up-stairs.

"Merely removing the location of the noise will lessen it but slightly," Rufe called to her as she got to the door. "Seriously, do you know of a hayloft in the neighborhood where I might go?"

"You might go next door to the Williams' garage and thrust your head into their can of gasolene-that's the latter-day equivalent for hay!" Cousin Eunice answered kinder-mad, for she admires Waterloo, no matter how he acts.

So Miss Wilburn and I talked over all we knew about the little fellow; and I thought what a mistake I'd made in not asking Cousin Eunice what Miss Wilburn's lover's name was and where he is buried and a few other things like that. But then I couldn't, because I didn't know that there was a lover. Still, Mammy Lou can talk till her hair turns straight and she won't get me to believe that he's anything else but dead. Everything seems to point to it, from the fact of her not getting any letters from young men and looking lonesome at times and not wearing any diamond engagement ring. I'm sure he gave her one, but maybe his wicked kinfolks made her give it back to them after the funeral. Or maybe she buried it in his grave. I don't know why Miss Wilburn never talks about him for one of our neighbors talks all the time about her husband which was killed in the war. I used to be delighted to hear her commence telling about him. He was killed at the battle of Shiloh and was the tallest and handsomest man in the army. She takes a great deal of pleasure in talking about him, and when there are summer boarders at her house he grows to be nearly seven feet tall and so handsome that it hurts your eyes to look at him. Her second husband is stone deaf and can't hear it thunder, which makes it nicer for them, for while it amuses her to talk about her first husband's good looks it ain't hurting to the second one's feelings.

The autumn leaves are just lovely now and make you want to write a book, or at least a piece of poetry. It's right hard on you, though, not to have anything to write about but a girl without a beau. It's kinder like eating sweet potatoes without butter. I decided this morning that I better make the most of what I have got as a subject, so I started to writing one called The Maiden Widow. I've heard of a book by that name, but I don't reckon they'll have me arrested for writing just a short poem by the same name. We have some nature study every morning in the woods, which is one of the best things about having a governess. She lets me do just as I like, so I took my tablet and while she was writing some history questions I composed on my poem. It is very discouraging work, though, to write about widows, for there's nothing on earth that will rhyme with them. I got one line, "The maiden widow, she wept, she did, oh!" which was sorry enough sounding, but I didn't know whether or not it was exactly fair to have two words rhyming with just one. After a while I thought maybe a regular poet could do a better job by it than even I could, so I decided to ask Marcella to ask Julius to write me a few lines as a copy to go by, for anybody that can draw such lovely pictures ought to be able to write poetry.

Marcella came over this afternoon and I took her up-stairs very secretly to ask her about it. She said why, what on earth made me think that Miss Wilburn was grieving over a dead lover, and I told her that everything made me think it. After studying about it for a little while she said well, it might be that I was right, for the girl did seem to have something preying on her mind. But she said such subjects were not suitable for children of my age to be writing about and that I ought to write about violets and sparrows. I said then would she please find out from Julius whether or not there was a rhyme for widow, for I might want to write a poem on them when I got grown, but she said, "Ann, you are incorrigible," which I keep forgetting to look up in the dictionary, although it looks like I would, for it has been said to me so many times.

A thing happened this morning which made me understand what Shakespeare must have meant when he said "Much Ado About Nothing." It reminded me of the time Cousin Eunice rushed to the telephone and called Rufe up and said, "Oh, dearest, the baby's got a tooth!" This was harmless enough in itself, but it is when things are misunderstood that the trouble comes in. Rufe misunderstood and thought she said, "The baby's got the croup," which is very dangerous. So he didn't stop to hear another word, but dropped the telephone and grabbed his hat. It was night, for Rufe's paper is a morning one that works its men at night, and didn't wait for a car, but jumped into a carriage, which costs like smoke. He drove by Doctor Gordon's house and told the driver to run in and tell Doctor Gordon to come right on and drive to his house with him, as his baby was very sick, although Doctor Gordon has an automobile of his own. He and Ann Lisbeth happened to have a few friends in to play cards with them that night, but when she heard the news about the baby she told the company that Cousin Eunice was one of the best friends she had in the world and she would have to go on over and see if she could help any. So the card party was broken up and they all drove as hard as they could tear over to Rufe's house, where they found Cousin Eunice tickled to death over the tooth and washing Waterloo's little mouth out with boric acid water, which is the proper thing. This is what I call much ado about nothing, and I'm sure Shakespeare would if he was living to-day.

What happened this morning was equally as exciting and a long story, so I'm going to stop and sharpen my pencil, for I despise to write exciting things with a pencil that won't half write.

I reckon some people might lay the blame on me for what happened, but it ain't so at all, if people hadn't just misunderstood me. Anyhow, it may make me "curb my imagination," as Julius says, for that is what they blamed it all on.

When we started out for our nature study this morning father said if we could stand the sight of human nature a little would we go down town right after train time and get the mail? We said yes and Marcella, who was with us, said she would be glad to go in that direction, for Julius was there and we could meet him and he would walk home with us. She still likes to see him every few minutes in the day.

There are usually several very handsome drummers and insurance men and things like that standing around the post-office which have just got off of the train at this hour, but this morning there wasn't anybody but one strange man and he was talking to Julius like he knew him. When we passed by Julius spoke to us and I noticed that the strange man looked at Miss Wilburn and looked surprised. All in a minute I thought maybe he was the lover which had just returned from some foreign shore, instead of being dead, and would run up with open hands and say, "Louise," and she would say, "Marmaduke," and all would be well.

I learned afterward, though, that his name is Mr. White and he lives in the city and has come down here on business and knew Julius. After we had passed he remarked that he was surprised to see Miss Wilburn down here as he didn't know she was away from home. Julius asked him if he knew Miss Wilburn and he said no, but he knew Paul Creighton, the fellow she was going to marry, mighty well. Julius, instead of not saying anything as a person ought, spoke up and said why he understood that Miss Wilburn's sweetheart was dead. The strange man said why he was utterly shocked for he had seen Creighton on the streets only a few days before, but he had looked kinder pale and worried then. He said it made him feel weak in the knees to hear such a thing, and Julius commenced saying something about it must be a mistake then, but Mr. White said no, he guessed it was so, for Mr. Creighton had looked awful pale and thin, like he might be going into consumption. Julius said well he was certain his wife had told him something about Miss Wilburn having a dead lover, but he hadn't paid much attention to what she was saying, like most married men; but it surely couldn't be so. By that time Mr. White was moving down the street to where we were and was asking Julius to introduce him to Miss Wilburn, so he could find out the particulars about poor old Creighton. I will give Julius credit for trying to stop him, but he is one of the kind of persons that never knows when to say a thing and when not to, Mr. White, I mean. And before Julius could get him side-tracked they had caught up with us and there wasn't anything else to do but introduce him. Miss Wilburn smiled very joyfully when she heard his name, and in a minute he had got her off to one side and I heard him saying something about how horrified he was to hear the news about poor Creighton. In just an instant Miss Wilburn was the one that looked horrified and said why what? This seemed to bring Mr. White to his right mind a little and instead of going ahead and telling it he turned around to Julius and said:

"Why our friend, Young, here, was telling me that--"

"I told you that it must be a mistake," Julius spoke up, looking awfully uncomfortable, "but I remember my wife saying that-oh, say, Marcella, explain-will you?"

"Why, Julius Young," Marcella commenced in a married-lady tone, "you promised me that you wouldn't say a word about it; anyway we only suspected--"

"Will nobody tell me what has happened to Paul?" Miss Wilburn said in a low, strangled voice, like she couldn't get her breath good.

"Ain't anything happened to him that we know of," I told her, for Julius and the rest of them looked like they were speechless. "We thought you knew it!"

"Knew what? Oh, for the love of Heaven, tell me!" she said, poor thing! And I felt awful sorry for us all, but for Miss Wilburn and me in particular.

I just couldn't tell her we thought he was plumb dead, so I told her we thought he must be very sick or something.

"He may be," she answered, not looking any happier. "I haven't heard from him since I've been here! Oh, it serves me right for acting such an idiot as to run off down here and forbid his writing to me! He may be desperately ill! How did you hear it?"

"Ain't anybody heard it yet!" I told her, feeling so angry at Marcella and Julius and Mr. White for telling such a thing and so ashamed of myself for making it up that I couldn't think very well. I kept wishing in my mind that it was the first day of April so I could say "April Fool," or an earthquake would happen or anything else to pass it off; but didn't anything happen, so I had to stand there with all of them looking at me and tell Miss Wilburn how Mammy Lou said she believed she had been fooled because she looked so sad at the mention of marrying, but I believed the gentleman was dead.

Well, it took every one of us every step of the way home to explain it to her and to each other, each one of us talking as hard as we could; and Julius remarked what he'd do the next time he heard any such "sewing-society tales" under his breath.

Just as we got in sight of the house poor Miss Wilburn was so worn out with grief and anxiety that she sat down on the big stump and laughed and cried as hard as she could. Mother saw her from the window and she and mammy ran down to where we were to see what it was all about. She patted Miss Wilburn on the back and on the head and said, "poor dear," while mammy said she would run right back to the house and brew her some strong tea, which was splendid when a body was distressed about a man.

"There, dear, talk to us about him," mother said, after the whole story was told, "tell us about him, for talking will do you good. You've been unnaturally quiet about him since you've been here!"

"I was trying to find out whether or not I really loved him," Miss Wilburn said, after Julius and Marcella had left us and we were going on up the walk. "It was silly of me, for all the time I've been so lonesome for him that I felt as if I should scream if anybody suggested men or marrying to me!"

"Yes, you pore lamb," mammy said, walking on fast to make the tea, "you loves him, you shore do. I knows them symptoms!"