Bab: A Sub Deb

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


Milk! When I was going through a tradgedy. For if it is not a tradgedy
to be engaged to a man one never saw before, what is it?

All through the refreshments I could feel that his eyes were on me. And
I hated him. It was all well enough for Jane to say he was handsome. She
wasn't going to have to marry him. I detest dimples in chins. I always
have. And anybody could see that it was his first mustache, and
soft, and that he took it round like a mother pushing a new baby in a
perambulater. It was sickning.

I left just after supper. He did not see me when I went upstairs, but
he had missed me, for when Hannah and I came down, he was at the door,
waiting. Hannah was loaded down with silly favors, and lagged behind,
which gave him a chance to speak to me. I eyed him coldly and tried to
pass him, but I had no chance.

"I'll see you tomorrow, DEAREST," he whispered.

"Not if I can help it," I said, looking straight ahead. Hannah had
dropped a stocking--not her own. One of the Xmas favors--and was
fumbling about for it.

"You are tired and unerved to-night, Bab. When I have seen your father
tomorrow, and talked to him----"

"Don't you dare to see my father."

"----and when he has agreed to what I propose," he went on, without
paying any atention to what I had said, "you will be calmer. We can plan
things."

Hannah came puffing up then, and he helped us into the motor. He was
very careful to see that we were covered with the robes, and he tucked
Hannah's feet in. She was awfully flattered. Old Fool! And she babbled
about him until I wanted to slap her.

"He's a nice young man. Miss Bab," she said. "That is, if he's the One.
And he has nice manners. So considerate. Many a party I've taken your
sister to, and never before----"

"I wish you'd shut up, Hannah," I said. "He's a Pig, and I hate him."

She sulked after that, and helped me out of my things at home without a
word. When I was in bed, however, and she was hanging up my clothes, she
said:

"I don't know what's got into you, Miss Barbara. You are that cross that
there's no living with you."

"Oh, go away," I said.

"And what's more," she added, "I don't know but what your mother ought
to know about these goingson. You're only a little girl, with all your
high and mightiness, and there's going to be no scandal in this Familey
if I can help it."

I put the bedclothes over my head, and she went out.

But of course I could not sleep. Sis was not home yet, or mother, and I
went into Sis's room and got a novel from her table. It was the story of
a woman who had married a man in a hurry, and without really loving him,
and when she had been married a year, and hated the very way her husband
drank his coffee and cut the ends off his cigars, she found some one she
really loved with her Whole Heart. And it was too late. But she wrote
him one Letter, the other man, you know, and it caused a lot of trouble.
So she said--I remember the very words--

"Half the troubles in the world are caused by Letters. Emotions are
changable things"--this was after she had found that she really loved
her husband after all, but he had had to shoot himself before she found
it out, although not fataly--"but the written word does not change. It
remains always, embodying a dead truth and giving it apparent life. No
woman should ever put her thoughts on paper."

She got the Letter back, but she had to steal it. And it turned out that
the other man had really only wanted her money all the time.

That story was a real ilumination to me. I shall have a great deal of
money when I am of age, from my grandmother. I saw it all. It was a trap
sure enough. And if I was to get out I would have to have the letter.

IT WAS THE LETTER THAT PUT ME IN HIS POWER.

The next day was Xmas. I got a lot of things, including the necklace,
and a mending basket from Sis, with the hope that it would make me
tidey, and father had bought me a set of Silver Fox, which mother
did not approve of, it being too expencive for a young girl to wear,
according to her. I must say that for an hour or two I was happy enough.

But the afternoon was terrable. We keep open house on Xmas afternoon,
and father makes a champagne punch, and somebody pours tea, although
nobody drinks it, and there are little cakes from the Club, and the
house is decorated with poin--(Memo: Not in the Dictionery and I cannot
spell it, although not usualy troubled as to spelling.)

At eleven o'clock the mail came in, and mother sorted it over, while
father took a gold piece out to the post-man.

There were about a million cards, and mother glanced at the addresses
and passed them round. But suddenly she frowned. There was a small
parcel, addressed to me.

"This looks like a Gift, Barbara," she said. And proceded to open it.

My heart skipped two beats, and then hamered. Mother's mouth was set as
she tore off the paper and opened the box. There was a card, which she
glanced at, and underneath, was a book of poems.

"Love Lyrics," said mother, in a terrable voice. "To Barbara, from
H----"

"Mother----" I began, in an ernest tone.

"A child of mine recieving such a book from a man!" she went on.
"Barbara, I am speachless."

But she was not speachless. If she was speachless for the next half
hour, I would hate to hear her really converse. And all that I could do
was to bear it. For I had made a Frankenstein--see the book read last
term by the Literary Society--not out of grave-yard fragments, but from
malted milk tablets, so to speak, and now it was pursuing me to an early
grave. For I felt that I simply could not continue to live.

"Now--where does he live?"

"I--don't know, mother."

"You sent him a Letter."

"I don't know where he lives, anyhow."

"Leila," mother said, "will you ask Hannah to bring my smelling salts?"

"Aren't you going to give me the book?" I asked. "It--it sounds
interesting."

"You are shameless," mother said, and threw the thing into the fire. A
good many of my things seemed to be going into the fire at that time. I
cannot help wondering what they would have done if it had all happened
in the summer, and no fires burning. They would have felt quite
helpless, I imagine.

Father came back just then, but he did not see the Book, which was then
blazing with a very hot red flame. I expected mother to tell him, and I
daresay I should not have been surprised to see my furs follow the book.
I had got into the way of expecting to see things burning that do not
belong in a fireplace. But mother did not tell him.


I have thought over this a great deal, and I beleive that now I
understand. Mother was unjustly putting the blame for everything on this
School, and mother had chosen the School. My father had not been much
impressed by the catalogue. "Too much dancing room and not enough tennis
courts," he had said. This, of course, is my father's opinion. Not mine.

The real reason, then, for mother's silence was that she disliked
confessing that she made a mistake in her choice of a School.

I ate very little Luncheon and my only comfort was my seed pearls. I was
wearing them, for fear the door-bell would ring, and a Letter or flowers
would arrive from H. In that case I felt quite sure that someone, in a
frenzy, would burn the Pearls also.

The afternoon was terrable. It rained solid sheets, and Patrick, the
butler, gave notice three hours after he had recieved his Xmas presents,
on account of not being let off for early mass.

But my father's punch is famous, and people came, and stood around and
buzzed, and told me I had grown and was almost a young lady. And Tommy
Gray got out of his cradle and came to call on me, and coughed all the
time, with a whoop. He developed the whooping cough later. He had on his
first long trousers, and a pair of lavender Socks and a Tie to match. He
said they were not exactly the same shade, but he did not think it would
be noticed. Hateful child!

At half past five, when the place was jamed, I happened to look up.
Carter Brooks was in the hall, and behind him was H. He had seen me
before I saw him, and he had a sort of sickley grin, meant to denote
joy. I was talking to our Bishop at the time, and he was asking me what
sort of services we had in the school chapel.

I meant to say "non-sectarian," but in my surprize and horror I regret
to say that I said, "vegetarian." Carter Brooks came over to me like a
cat to a saucer of milk, and pulled me off into a corner.

"It's all right," he said. "I 'phoned mama, and she said to bring him.
He's known as Grosvenor here, of course. They'll never suspect a thing.
Now, do I get a small `thank you'?"

"I won't see him."

"Now look here, Bab," he protested, "you two have got to make this thing
up You are a pair of Idiots, quarreling over nothing. Poor old Hal is
all broken up. He's sensative. You've got to remember how sensative he
is."

"Go, away" I cried, in broken tones. "Go away, and take him with you."

"Not until he had spoken to your Father," he observed, setting his jaw.
"He's here for that, and you know it. You can't play fast and loose with
a man, you know."

"Don't you dare to let him speak to father!"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"That's between you to, of course," he said. "It's not up to me. Tell
him yourself, if you've changed your mind. I don't intend," he went on,
impressively, "to have any share in ruining his life."

"Oh piffle," I said. I am aware that this is slang, and does not belong
in a Theme. But I was driven to saying it.

I got through the crowd by using my elbows. I am afraid I gave
the Bishop quite a prod, and I caught Mr. Andrews on his rotateing
waistcoat. But I was desparate.

Alas, I was too late.

The caterer's man, who had taken Patrick's place in a hurry, was at the
punch bowl, and father was gone. I was just in time to see him take H.
into his library and close the door.

Here words fail me. I knew perfectly well that beyond that door H, whom
I had invented and who therefore simply did not exist, was asking for my
Hand. I made up my mind at once to run away and go on the stage, and
I had even got part way up the stairs, when I remembered that, with
a dollar for the picture and five dollars for the violets and three
dollars for the hat pin I had given Sis, and two dollars and a quarter
for mother's handkercheif case, I had exactly a dollar and seventy-five
cents in the world.

I WAS TRAPPED.

I went up to my room, and sat and waited. Would father be violent, and
throw H. out and then come upstairs, pale with fury and disinherit me?
Or would the whole Familey conspire together, when the people had gone,
and send me to a convent? I made up my mind, if it was the convent, to
take the veil and be a nun. I would go to nurse lepers, or something,
and then, when it was too late, they would be sorry.

The stage or the convent, nun or actress? Which?

I left the door open, but there was only the sound of revelry below.
I felt then that it was to be the convent. I pinned a towel around my
face, the way the nuns wear whatever they call them, and from the side
it was very becoming. I really did look like Julia Marlowe, especialy as
my face was very sad and tradgic.

At something before seven every one had gone, and I heard Sis and mother
come upstairs to dress for dinner. I sat and waited, and when I heard
father I got cold all over. But he went on by, and I heard him go into
mother's room and close the door. Well, I knew I had to go through with
it, although my life was blasted. So I dressed and went downstairs.

Father was the first down. HE CAME DOWN WHISTLING.

It is perfectly true. I could not beleive my ears.

He approached me with a smileing face.

"Well, Bab," he said, exactly as if nothing had happened, "have you had
a nice day?"

He had the eyes of a bacilisk, that creature of Fable.

"I've had a lovely day, Father," I replied. I could be bacilisk-ish
also.

There is a mirror over the drawing room mantle, and he turned me around
until we both faced it.

"Up to my ears," he said, referring to my heighth. "And Lovers already!
Well, I daresay we must make up our minds to lose you."

"I won't be lost," I declared, almost violently. "Of course, if you
intend to shove me off your hands, to the first Idiot who comes along
and pretends a lot of stuff, I----"

"My dear child!" said father, looking surprised. "Such an outburst! All
I was trying to say, before your mother comes down, is that I--well,
that I understand and that I shall not make my little girl unhappy
by--er--by breaking her Heart."

"Just what do you mean by that, father?"

He looked rather uncomfortable, being one who hates to talk sentament.

"It's like this, Barbara," he said. "If you want to marry this young
man--and you have made it very clear that you do--I am going to see that
you do it. You are young, of course, but after all your dear mother was
not much older than you are when I married her."

"Father!" I cried, from an over-flowing heart.

"I have noticed that you are not happy, Barbara," he said. "And I shall
not thwart you, or allow you to be thwarted. In affairs of the Heart,
you are to have your own way."

"I want to tell you something!" I cried. "I will NOT be cast off! I----"

"Tut, tut," said Father. "Who is casting you off? I tell you that I
like the young man, and give you my blessing, or what is the present-day
equivelent for it, and you look like a figure of Tradgedy!"

But I could endure no more. My own father had turned on me and was
rending me, so to speak. With a breaking heart and streaming eyes I flew
to my Chamber.

There, for hours I paced the floor.

Never, I determined, would I marry H. Better death, by far. He was a
scheming Fortune-hunter, but to tell the family that was to confess all.
And I would never confess. I would run away before I gave Sis such a
chance at me. I would run away, but first I would kill Carter Brooks.

Yes, I was driven to thoughts of murder. It shows how the first false
step leads down and down, to crime and even to death. Oh never, never,
gentle reader, take that first False Step. Who knows to what it may
lead!

"One false Step is never retreived." Gray--On a Favorite Cat.

I reflected also on how the woman in the book had ruined her life with
a letter. "The written word does not change," she had said. "It remains
always, embodying a dead truth and giving it apparent life."

"Apparent life" was exactly what my letter had given to H. Frankenstein.
That was what I called him, in my agony. I felt that if only I had never
written the Letter there would have been no trouble. And another awful
thought came to me: Was there an H after all? Could there be an H?

Once the French teacher had taken us to the theater in New York, and a
woman sitting on a chair and covered with a sheet, had brought a man out
of a perfectly empty Cabinet, by simply willing to do it. The Cabinet
was empty, for four respectible looking men went up and examined it, and
one even measured it with a Tape-measure.

She had materialised him, out of nothing.

And while I had had no Cabinet, there are many things in this world
"that we do not dream of in our Philosophy." Was H. a real person, or
a creature of my disordered brain? In plain and simple language, COULD
THERE BE SUCH A PERSON?

I feared not.

And If there was no H, really, and I married him, where would I be?

There was a ball at the Club that night, and the Familey all went. No
one came to say good-night to me, and by half past ten I was alone with
my misery. I knew Carter Brooks would be at the ball, and H also, very
likely, dancing around as agreably as if he really existed, and I had
not made him up.

I got the book from Sis's room again, and re-read it. The woman in it
had been in great trouble, too, with her husband cleaning his revolver
and making his will. And at last she had gone to the apartments of the
man who had her letters, in a taxicab covered with a heavy veil, and had
got them back. He had shot himself when she returned--the husband--but
she burned the letters and then called a Doctor, and he was saved. Not
the doctor, of course. The husband.

The villain's only hold on her had been the letters, so he went to South
Africa and was gored by an elephant, thus passing out of her life.

Then and there I knew that I would have to get my letter back from H.
Without it he was powerless. The trouble was that I did not know where
he was staying. Even if he came out of a Cabinet, the Cabinet would have
to be somewhere, would it not?

I felt that I would have to meet gile with gile. And to steal one's own
letter is not really stealing. Of course if he was visiting any one and
pretending to be a real person, I had no chance in the world. But if he
was stopping at a hotel I thought I could manage. The man in the book
had had an apartment, with a Japanese servant, who went away and drew
plans of American Forts in the kitchen and left the woman alone with the
desk containing the Letter. But I daresay that was unusualy lucky and
not the sort of thing to look forward to.

With me, to think is to act. Hannah was out, it being Xmas and her
brother-in-law having a wake, being dead, so I was free to do anything I
wanted to.

First I called the Club and got Carter Brooks on the telephone.

"Carter," I said, "I--I am writing a letter. Where is--where does H.
stay?"

"Who?"

"H.--Mr. Grosvenor."

"Why, bless your ardent little Heart! Writing, are you? It's sublime,
Bab!"

"Where does he live?"

"And is it all alone you are, on Xmas Night!" he burbled. (This is a
word from Alice in WonderLand, and although not in the dictionery, is
quite expressive.)

"Yes," I replied, bitterly. "I am old enough to be married off without
my consent, but I am not old enough for a real Ball. It makes me sick."

"I can smuggle him here, if you want to talk to him."

"Smuggle!" I said, with scorn. "There is no need to smuggle him. The
Familey is crazy about him. They are flinging me at him."

"Well, that's nice," he said. "Who'd have thought it! Shall I bring him
to the 'phone?"

"I don't want to talk to him. I hate him."

"Look here," he observed, "if you keep that up, he'll begin to beleive
you. Don't take these little quarrels too hard, Barbara. He's so happy
to-night in the thought that you----"

"Does he live in a Cabinet, or where?"

"In a what? I don't get that word."

"Don't bother. Where shall I send his letter?"

Well, it seemed he had an apartment at the Arcade, and I rang off. It
was after eleven by that time, and by the time I had got into my school
mackintosh and found a heavy veil of mother's and put it on, it was
almost half past.

The house was quiet, and as Patrick had gone, there was no one around in
the lower Hall. I slipped out and closed the door behind me, and
looked for a taxicab, but the veil was so heavy that I hailed our own
limousine, and Smith had drawn up at the curb before I knew him.

"Where to, lady?" he said. "This is a private car, but I'll take you
anywhere in the city for a dollar."

A flush of just indignation rose to my cheek, at the knowledge that
Smith was using our car for a taxicab! And just as I was about to speak
to him severely, and threaten to tell father, I remembered, and walked
away.

"Make it seventy-five cents," he called after me. But I went on. It was
terrable to think that Smith could go on renting our car to all sorts of
people, covered with germs and everything, and that I could never report
it to the Familey.

I got a real taxi at last, and got out at the Arcade, giving the man a
quarter, although ten cents would have been plenty as a tip.

I looked at him, and I felt that he could be trusted.

"This," I said, holding up the money, "is the price of Silence."

But If he was trustworthy he was not subtile, and he said:

"The what, miss?"

"If any one asks if you have driven me here, YOU HAVE NOT" I explained,
in an impressive manner.

He examined the quarter, even striking a match to look at it. Then he
replied: "I have not!" and drove away.

Concealing my nervousness as best I could, I entered the doomed
Building. There was only a hall boy there, asleep in the elevator, and
I looked at the thing with the names on it. "Mr. Grosvenor" was on the
fourth floor.

I wakened the boy, and he yawned and took me to the fourth floor. My
hands were stiff with nervousness by that time, but the boy was half
asleep, and evadently he took me for some one who belonged there, for
he said "Goodnight" to me, and went on down. There was a square landing
with two doors, and "Grosvenor" was on one. I tried it gently. It was
unlocked.

"FACILUS DESCENSUS IN AVERNU."

I am not defending myself. What I did was the result of desparation.
But I cannot even write of my sensations as I stepped through that fatal
portal, without a sinking of the heart. I had, however, had suficient
forsight to prepare an alabi. In case there was some one present in the
apartment I intended to tell a falshood, I regret to confess, and to say
that I had got off at the wrong floor.

There was a sort of hall, with a clock and a table, and a shaded
electric lamp, and beyond that the door was open into a sitting room.

There was a small light burning there, and the remains of a wood fire in
the fireplace. There was no Cabinet however.

Everything was perfectly quiet, and I went over to the fire and warmed
my hands. My nails were quite blue, but I was strangly calm. I took off
mother's veil, and my mackintosh, so I would be free to work, and I then
looked around the room. There were a number of photographs of rather
smart looking girls, and I curled my lip scornfully. He might have
fooled them but he could not decieve me. And it added to my bitterness
to think that at that moment the villain was dancing--and flirting
probably--while I was driven to actual theft to secure the Letter that
placed me in his power.

When I had stopped shivering I went to his desk. There were a lot of
letters on the top, all addressed to him as Grosvenor. It struck me
suddenly as strange that if he was only visiting, under an assumed name,
in order to see me, that so many people should be writing to him as Mr.
Grosvenor. And it did not look like the room of a man who was visiting,
unless he took a freight car with him on his travels.

THERE WAS A MYSTERY. All at once I knew it.

My letter was not on the desk, so I opened the top drawer. It seemed to
be full of bills, and so was the one below it. I had just started on the
third drawer, when a terrable thing happened.

"Hello!" said some one behind me.

I turned my head slowly, and my heart stopped.

THE PORTERES INTO THE PASSAGE HAD OPENED, AND A GENTLEMAN IN HIS EVENING
CLOTHES WAS STANDING THERE.

"Just sit still, please," he said, in a perfectly cold voice. And he
turned and locked the door into the hall. I was absolutely unable to
speak. I tried once, but my tongue hit the roof of my mouth like the
clapper of a bell.

"Now," he said, when he had turned around. "I wish you would tell me
some good reason why I should not hand you over to the Police."

"Oh, please don't!" I said.

"That's eloquent. But not a reason. I'll sit down and give you a little
time. I take it, you did not expect to find me here."

"I'm in the wrong apartment. That's all," I said. "Maybe you'll think
that's an excuse and not a reason. I can't help it if you do."

"Well," he said, "that explains some things. It's pretty well known, I
fancy, that I have little worth stealing, except my good name."

"I was not stealing," I replied in a sulky manner.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "It IS an ugly word. We will strike it
from the record. Would you mind telling me whose apartment you intended
to--er--investigate? If this is the wrong one, you know."

"I was looking for a Letter."

"Letters, letters!" he said. "When will you women learn not to write
letters. Although"--he looked at me closely--"you look rather young for
that sort of thing." He sighed. "It's born in you, I daresay," he said.

Well, for all his patronizing ways, he was not very old himself.

"Of course," he said, "if you are telling the truth--and it sounds
fishy, I must say--it's hardly a Police matter, is it? It's rather one
for diplomasy. But can you prove what you say?"

"My word should be suficient," I replied stiffly. "How do I know that
YOU belong here?"

"Well, you don't, as a matter of fact. Suppose you take my word for
that, and I agree to beleive what you say about the wrong apartment,
Even then it's rather unusual. I find a pale and determined looking
young lady going through my desk in a business-like manner. She says she
has come for a Letter. Now the question is, is there a Letter? If so,
what Letter?"

"It is a love letter," I said.

"Don't blush over such a confession," he said. "If it is true, be proud
of it. Love is a wonderful thing. Never be ashamed of being in love, my
child."

"I am not in love," I cried with bitter furey.

"Ah! Then it is not YOUR letter!"

"I wrote it."

"But to simulate a passion that does not exist--that is sackrilege. It
is----"

"Oh, stop talking," I cried, in a hunted tone. "I can't bear it. If you
are going to arrest me, get it over."