Bab: A Sub Deb

M >> Mary Roberts Rinehart >> Bab: A Sub Deb


Jane spent the night with me, and being unable to sleep, owing to
dieting again and having an emty stomache, wakened me at 2 A. M. and we
went to the pantrey together. When going back upstairs with some cake
and canned pairs, we heard a door close below. We both shreiked, and the
Familey got up, but found no one except Leila, who could not sleep
and was out getting some air. They were very unpleasant, but as Jane
observed, families have little or no gratitude.

I come now to the Stranger again.

On the next afternoon, while engaged in a few words with the station
hackman, who said I was taking his trade although not needing the
Money--which was a thing he could not possably know--while he had a
familey and a horse to feed, I saw the Stranger of the milk wagon, et
cetera, emerge from the one-thirty five.

He then looked at a piece of MAUVE NOTE PAPER, and said:

"How much to take me up the Greenfield Road?"

"Where to?" I asked in a pre-emptory manner.

He then looked at a piece of MAUVE NOTE PAPER, and said:

"To a big pine tree at the foot of Oak Hill. Do you know the Place?"

Did I know the Place? Had I not, as a child, rolled and even turned
summersalts down that hill? Was it not on my very ancestrial acres? It
was, indeed.

Although suspicous at once, because of no address but a pine tree, I
said nothing, except merely:

"Fifty cents."

"Suppose we fix it like this," he suggested. "Fifty cents for the trip
and another fifty for going away at once and not hanging around, and
fifty more for forgetting me the moment you leave?"

I had until then worn my gogles, but removing them to wipe my face, he
stared, and then said:

"And another fifty for not running into anything, including milk
wagons."

I hesatated. To dollars was to dollars, but I have always been honest,
and above reproach. But what if he was the Theif, and now about to
survey my own Home with a view to entering it clandestinely? Was I one
to assist him under those circumstanses?

However, at that moment I remembered the Reward. With that amount I
could pay everything and start life over again, and even purchace a few
things I needed. For I was allready wearing my TROUSEAU, having been
unable to get any plain every-day garments, and thus frequently obliged
to change a tire in a CREPE DE CHINE petticoat, et cetera.

I yeilded to the temptation. How could I know that I was sewing my own
destruction?


IV


Let us, dear reader, pass with brevaty over the next few days. Even to
write them is a repugnent task, for having set my hand to the Plow, I am
not one to do things half way and then stop.

Every day the Stranger came and gave me to dollars and I took him to
the back road on our place and left him there. And every night, although
weary unto death with washing the car, carrying people, changeing tires
and picking nails out of the road which the hackman put there to make
trouble, I but pretended to slumber, and instead sat up in the library
and kept my terrable Vigil. For now I knew that he had dishonest designs
on the sacred interior of my home, and was but biding his time.

The house having been closed for a long time, there were mice
everywhere, so that I sat on a table with my feet up.

I got so that I fell asleep almost anywhere but particularly at meals,
and mother called in a doctor. He said I needed exercise! Ye gods!

Now I think this: if I were going to rob a house, or comit any sort
of Crime, I should do it and get it over, and not hang around for days
making up my mind. Besides keeping every one tence with anxiety. It is
like diving off a diving board for the first time. The longer you stand
there, the more afraid you get, and the farther (further?) it seems to
the water.

At last, feeling I could stand no more, I said this to the Stranger as
he was paying me. He was so surprized that he dropped a quarter in the
road, and did not pick it up. I went back for it later but some one else
had found it.

"Oh!" he said. "And all this time I've been beleiving that you--well, no
matter. So you think it's a mistake to delay to long?"

"I think when one has somthing Right or Wrong to do, and that's for your
conscience to decide, it's easier to do it quickly."

"I see," he said, in a thoughtfull manner. "Well, perhaps you are right.
Although I'm afraid you've been getting one fifty cents you didn't
earn."

"I have never hung around," I retorted. "And no Archibald is ever a
sneak."

"Archibald!" he said, getting very red. "Why, then you are----"

"It doesn't matter who I am," I said, and got into the car and went
away very fast, because I saw I had made a dreadfull Slip and probably
spoiled everything. It was not untill I was putting the car up for the
night that I saw I had gone off with his overcoat I hung it on a nail
and getting my revolver from under a board, I went home, feeling that I
had lost two hundred dollars, and all because of Familey pride.

How true that "pride goeth before a fall"!

I have not yet explained about the revolver. I had bought it from the
gardner, having promised him ten dollars for it, although not as yet
paid for. And I had meant to learn to be an expert, so that I could
capture the Crimenal in question without assistance, thus securing all
the reward.

But owing to nervousness the first day I had, while practicing in the
chicken yard, hit the Gardner in the pocket and would have injured him
severely had he not had his garden scizzors in his pocket.

He was very angry, and said he had a bruize the exact shape of the
scizzors on him, so I had had to give him the ten plus five dollars
more, which was all I had and left me stranded.

I went to my domacile that evening in low spirits, which were not
improved by a conversation I had with Tom that night after the Familey
had gone out to a Club dance.

He said that he did not like women and girls who did things.

"I like femanine girls," he said. "A fellow wants to be the Oak and feel
the Vine clinging to him."

"I am afectionate," I said, "but not clinging. I cannot change my
Nature."

"Just what do you mean by afectionate?" he asked, in a stern voice. "Is
it afectionate for you to sit over there and not even let me hold your
hand? If that's afection, give me somthing else."

Alas, it was but to true. When away from me I thought of him tenderly,
and of whether he was thinking of me. But when with me I was diferent. I
could not account for this, and it troubled me. Because I felt this way.
Romanse had come into my life, but suppose I was incapable of loving,
although loved?

Why should I wish to be embrased, but become cold and fridgid when about
to be?

"It's come to a Show-down, Bab," he said, ernestly. "Either you love me
or you don't. I'm darned if I know which."

"Alas, I do not know" I said in a low and pitious voice. I then buried
my face in my hands, and tried to decide. But when I looked up he was
gone, and only the sad breese wailed around me.

I had expected that the Theif would take my hint and act that night, if
not scared off by learning that I belonged to the object of his nefarius
designs. But he did not come, and I was wakened on the library table at
8 A. M. by George coming in to open the windows.

I was by that time looking pale and thin, and my father said to me that
morning, ere departing for the office:

"Haven't anything you'd like to get off your chest, have you, Bab?"

I sighed deeply.

"Father," I said, "do you think me cold? Or lacking in afection?"

"Certainly not."

"Or one who does not know her own mind?"

"Well," he observed, "those who have a great deal of mind do not always
know it all. Just as you think you know it some new corner comes up that
you didn't suspect and upsets everything."

"Am I femanine?" I then demanded, in an anxious manner.

"Femanine! If you were any more so we couldn't bare it."

I then inquired if he prefered the clinging Vine or the independant
tipe, which follows its head and not its instincts. He said a man liked
to be engaged to a clinging Vine, but that after marriage a Vine got to
be a darned nusance and took everything while giving nothing, being
the sort to prefer chicken croquets to steak and so on, and wearing a
boudoir cap in bed in the mornings.

He then kissed me and said:

"Just a word of advise, Bab, from a parent who is, of course, extremely
old but has not forgoten his Youth entirely. Don't try to make yourself
over for each new Admirer who comes along. Be yourself. If you want to
do any making over, try it on the boys. Most of them could stand it."

That morning, after changing another tire and breaking three finger
nails, I remembered the overcoat and, putting aside my scruples, went
through the pockets. Although containing no Burglar's tools, I found a
SKETCH OF THE LOWER FLOOR OF OUR HOUSE, WITH A CROSS OUTSIDE ONE OF THE
LIBRARY WINDOWS!

I was for a time greatly excited, but calmed myself, since there was
work to do. I felt that, as I was to capture him unaided, I must make a
Plan, which I did and which I shall tell of later on.

Alas, while thinking only of securing the Reward and of getting Sis
married, so that I would be able to be engaged and enjoy it without
worry as to Money, coming out and so on, my Ship of Love was in the
hands of the wicked, and about to be utterly destroyed, or almost, the
complete finish not coming untill later. But

'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

This is the tradgic story. Tom had gone to the station, feeling
repentant probably, or perhaps wishing to drive the Arab, and finding me
not yet there, had conversed with the hackman. And that person, for whom
I have nothing but contempt and scorn, had observed to him that every
day I met a young gentleman at the three-thirty train and took him for a
ride!

Could Mendasity do more? Is it right that such a Creature, with his
pockets full of nails and scandle, should vote, while intellagent women
remain idle? I think not.

When, therefore, I waved my hand to my FIANCEE, thus showing a forgiving
disposition, I was met but with a cold bow. I was heart-broken, but it
is but to true that in our state of society the female must not make
advanses, but must remain still, although suffering. I therfore sat
still and stared hautily at the water cap of my car, although seathing
within, but without knowing the cause of our rupture.

The Stranger came. I shrink in retrospect from calling him the Theif,
although correct in one sense. I saw Tom stareing at him banefully, but
I took no notice, merely getting out and kicking the tires to see if air
enough in them. I then got in and drove away.

The Stranger looked excited, and did not mention the weather as
customery. But at last he said:

"Somehow I gather, Little Sister, that you know a lot of things you do
not talk about."

"I do not care to be adressed as `Little Sister,'" I said in an icy
tone. "As for talking, I do not interfere with what is not my concern."

"Good," he observed. "And I take it that, when you find an overcoat or
any such garment, you do not exhibit it to the Familey, but put it away
in some secluded nook. Eh, what?"

"No one has seen it. It is in the Car now, under that rug."

He turned and looked at me intently.

"Do you know," he observed, "my admiration for you is posatively beyond
words!"

"Then don't talk," I said, feeling still anguished by Tom's conduct and
not caring much just then about the reward or any such mundane matters.

"But I MUST talk," he replied. "I have a little plan, which I darsay you
have guest. As a matter of fact, I have reasons to think it will fall in
with--er--plans of your own."

Ye gods! Was I thus being asked to compound a felony? Or did he not
think I belonged to my own Familey, but to some other of the same name,
and was therfore not suspicous.

"Here's what I want," he went on in a smooth manner. "And there's
Twenty-five dollars in it for you. I want this little car of yours
tonight."

Here I almost ran into a cow, but was luckaly saved, as a Jersey cow
costs seventy-five dollars and even more, depending on how much milk
given daily. When back on the road again, having but bent a mud guard
against a fense, I was calmer.

"How do I know you will bring it back?" I asked, stareing at him
fixedly.

"Oh, now see here," he said, straightening his necktie, "I may be a
Theif, but I am not that kind of a Theif. I play for big stakes or
nothing."

I then remembered that there was a large dinner that night and that
mother would have her jewelery out from the safe deposit, and father's
pearl studs et cetera. I turned pale, but he did not notice it, being
busy counting out Twenty-five dollars in small bills.

I am one to think quickly, but with precicion. So I said:

"You can't drive, can you?"

"I do drive, dear Little--I beg your pardon. And I think, with a lesson
now, I could get along. Now see here, Twenty-five dollars while you are
asleep and therfore not gilty if I take your car from wherever you
keep it. I'll leave it at the station and you'll find it there in the
morning."

Is it surprizing that I agreed and that I took the filthy lucre? No. For
I knew then that he would never get to the station, and the reward of
two hundred, plus the Twenty-five, was already mine mentaly.

He learned to drive the Arab in but a short time, and I took him to
the shed and showed him where I hid the key. He said he had never heard
before of a girl owning a Motor and her parents not knowing, and while
we were talking there Tom Gray went by in the station hack and droped
somthing in the road.

When I went out to look IT WAS THE KEY RING I HAD GIVEN HIM.

I knew then that all was over and that I was doomed to a single life,
growing more and more meloncholy until Death releived my sufferings. For
I am of a proud nature, to proud to go to him and explain. If he was one
to judge me by apearances I was through. But I ached. Oh, how I ached!

The Theif did not go further that day, but returned to the station. And
I? I was not idle, beleive me. During the remainder of the day, although
a broken thing, I experamented to find exactly how much gas it took to
take the car from the station to our house. As I could not go to the
house I had to guess partly, but I have a good mind for estimations, and
I found that two quarts would do it.

So he could come to the house or nearby, but he could not get away with
his ill-gotten gains. I therfore returned to my home and ate a nursery
supper, and Hannah came in and said:

"I'm about out of my mind, Miss Bab. There's trouble coming to this
Familey, and it keeps on going to dinners and disregarding all hints."

"What sort of trouble?". I asked, in a flutering voice. For if she knew
and told I would not recieve the reward, or not solely.

"I think you know," she rejoined, in a suspicous tone. "And that you
should assist in such a thing, Miss Bab, is a great Surprize to me. I
have considered you flitey, but nothing more."

She then slapped a cup custard down in front of me and went away,
leaving me very nervous. Did she know of the Theif, or was she merely
refering to the car, which she might have guest from grease on my
clothes, which would get there in spite of being carful, especialy when
changing a tire?

Well, I have now come to the horrable events of that night, at writing
which my pen almost refuses. To have dreamed and hoped for a certain
thing, and then by my own actions to frustrate it was to be my fate.

"Oh God! that one might read the book of fate!" Shakspeare.

As I felt that, when everything was over, the people would come in from
the Club and the other country places to see the captured Crimenal, I
put on one of the frocks which mother had ordered and charged to me on
that Allowence which was by that time NON EST. (Latin for dissapated. I
use dissapated in the sense of spent, and not debauchery.) By that time
it was nine o'clock, and Tom had not come, nor even telephoned. But I
felt this way. If he was going to be jealous it was better to know it
now, rather than when to late and perhaps a number of offspring.

I sat on the Terrace and waited, knowing full well that it was to soon,
but nervous anyhow. I had before that locked all the library windows but
the one with the X on the sketch, also putting a nail at the top so he
could not open them and escape. And I had the key of the library door
and my trusty weapon under a cushion, loaded--the weapon, of course, not
the key.

I then sat down to my lonely Vigil.

At eleven P. M. I saw a sureptitious Figure coming across the lawn, and
was for a moment alarmed, as he might be coming while the Familey and
the jewels, and so on, were still at the Club.

But it was only Carter Brooks, who said he had invited himself to stay
all night, and the Club was sickning, as all the old people were playing
cards and the young ones were paired and he was an odd man.

He then sat down on the cushion with the revolver under it, and said:

"Gee whiz! Am I on the Cat? Because if so it is dead. It moves not."

"It might be a Revolver," I said, in a calm voice. "There was one lying
around somwhere."

So he got up and observed: "I have conscientous scruples against sitting
on a poor, unprotected gun, Bab." He then picked it up and it went off,
but did no harm except to put a hole in his hat which was on the floor.

"Now see here, Bab," he observed, looking angry, because it was a new
one--the hat. "I know you, and I strongly suspect you put that Gun
there. And no blue eyes and white frock will make me think otherwise.
And if so, why?"

"I am alone a good deal, Carter," I said, in a wistfull manner, "as my
natural protecters are usualy enjoying the flesh pots of Egypt. So it is
natural that I should wish to be at least fortified against trouble."

HE THEN PUT THE REVOLVER IN HIS POCKET, and remarked that he was all
the protecter I needed, and that the flesh pots only seemed desirable
because I was not yet out. But that once out I would find them full of
indigestion, headaches, and heartburn.

"This being grown-up is a sort of Promised Land," he said, "and it is
always just over the edge of the World. You'll never be as nice again,
Bab, as you are just now. And because you are still a little girl,
although `plited,' I am going to kiss the tip of your ear, which even
the lady who ansers letters in the newspapers could not object to, and
send you up to bed."

So he bent over and kissed the tip of my ear, which I considered not
a sentamental spot and therfore not to be fussy about. And I had to
pretend to go up to my chamber.

I was in a state of great trepidation as I entered my Residense, because
how was I to capture my prey unless armed to the teeth? Little did
Carter Brooks think that he carried in his pocket, not a Revolver or at
least not merely, but my entire future.

However, I am not one to give up, and beyond a few tears of weakness,
I did not give way. In a half hour or so I heard Carter Brooks asking
George for a whisky and soda and a suit of father's pajamas, and I knew
that, ere long, he would be

In pleasing Dreams and slumbers light.
--Scott.

Would or would he not bolt his door? On this hung, in the Biblical
phraze, all the law and the profits.

He did not. Crouching in my Chamber I saw the light over his transom
become blackness, and soon after, on opening his door and speaking
his name softly, there was no response. I therfore went in and took my
Revolver from his bureau, but there was somthing wrong with the spring
and it went off. It broke nothing, and as for Hannah saying it nearly
killed her, this is not true. It went into her mattress and wakened her,
but nothing more.

Carter wakened up and yelled, but I went out into the hall and said:

"I have taken my Revolver, which belongs to me anyhow. And don't dare to
come out, because you are not dressed."

I then went into my chamber and closed the door firmly, because the
servants were coming down screaming and Hannah was yelling that she was
shot. I explained through the door that nothing was wrong, and that I
would give them a dollar each to go back to bed and not alarm my dear
parents. Which they promised.

It was then midnight, and soon after my Familey returned and went
to bed. I then went downstairs and put on a dark coat because of not
wishing to be seen, and a cap of father's, wishing to apear as masculine
as possable, and went outside, carrying my weapon, and being careful
not to shoot it, as the spring seemed very loose. I felt lonely, but not
terrafied, as I would have been had I not known the Theif personaly and
felt that he was not of a violent tipe.

It was a dark night, and I sat down on the verandah outside the fatal
window, which is a French one to the floor, and waited. But suddenly my
heart almost stopped. Some one was moving about INSIDE!

I had not thought of an acomplice, yet such there must be. For I could
hear, on the hill, the noise of my automobile, which is not good on
grades and has to climb in a low geer. How terrable, to, to think of us
as betrayed by one of our own MENAGE!

It was indeed a cricis.

However, by getting in through a pantrey window, which I had done since
a child for cake and so on, I entered the hall and was able, without a
sound, to close and lock the library door. In this way, owing to nails
in the windows, I thus had the Gilty Member of our MENAGE so that only
the one window remained, and I now returned to the outside and covered
it with a steady aim.

What was my horror to see a bag thrust out through this window and set
down by the unknown within!

Dear reader, have you ever stood by and seen a home you loved looted,
despoiled and deprived of even the egg spoons, silver after-dinner
coffee cups, jewels and toilet articals? If not, you cannot comprehand
my greif and stern resolve to recover them, at whatever cost.

I by now cared little for the Reward but everything for honor.

The second Theif was now aproaching. I sank behind a steamer chair and
waited.

Need I say here that I meant to kill no one? Have I not, in every page,
shown that I am one for peace and have no desire for bloodshed? I think
I have. Yet, when the Theif apeared on the verandah and turned a pocket
flash on the leather bag, which I percieved was one belonging to the
Familey, I felt indeed like shooting him, although not in a fatal spot.

He then entered the room and spoke in a low tone.

THE REWARD WAS MINE.

I but slipped to the window and closed it from the outside, at the same
time putting in a nail as mentioned before, so that it could not be
raised, and then, raising my revolver in the air, I fired the remaining
four bullets, forgeting the roof of the verandah which now has four
holes in it.

Can I go on? Have I the strength to finish? Can I tell how the Theif
cursed and tried to raise the window, and how every one came downstairs
in their night clothes and broke in the library door, while carrying
pokers, and knives, et cetera. And how, when they had met with no
violence but only sulkey silence, and turned on the lights, there was
Leila dressed ready to elope, and the Theif had his arms around her,
and she was weeping? Because he was poor, although of good familey, and
lived in another city, where he was a broker, my familey had objected to
him. Had I but been taken into Leila's confidence, which he considered I
had, or at least that I understood, how I would have helped, instead of
thwarting! If any parents or older sisters read this, let them see how
wrong it is to leave any member of the familey in the dark, especialy in
AFFAIRES DE COUER.

Having seen from the verandah window that I had comitted an enor, and
unable to bear any more, I crawled in the pantrey window again and went
up stairs to my Chamber. There I undressed and having hid my weapon,
pretended to be asleep.

Some time later I heard my father open the door and look in.

"Bab!" he said, in a stealthy tone.

I then pretended to wake up, and he came in and turned on a light.

"I suppose you've been asleep all night," he said, looking at me with a
searching glanse.

"Not lately," I said. "I--wasn't there a Noise or somthing?"

"There was," he said. "Quite a racket. You're a sound sleeper. Well,
turn over and settle down. I don't want my little girl to lose her
Beauty Sleep."

He then went over to the lamp and said:

"By the way, Bab, I don't mind you're sleeping in my golf cap, but put
it back in the morning because I hate to have to hunt my things all over
the place."

I had forgoten to take off his cap!

Ah, well, it was all over, although he said nothing more, and went out.
But the next morning, after a terrable night, when I realized that Leila
had been about to get married and I had ruined everything, I found a
note from him under my door.


DEAR BAB: After thinking things over, I think you and I would better say
nothing about last night's mystery. But suppose you bring your car to
meet me tonight at the station, and we will take a ride, avoiding
milk wagons if possible. You might bring your check book, too, and the
revolver, which we had better bury in some quiet spot. FATHER.