Bab: A Sub Deb

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


"I'd rather NOT arrest you, if we can find a way out. You look so young,
so new to Crime! Even your excuse for being here is so naive, that
I--won't you tell me why you wrote a love letter, if you are not in
love? And whom you sent it to? That's important, you see, as it bears
on the case. I intend," he said, "to be judgdicial, unimpassioned, and
quite fair."

"I wrote a love letter" I explained, feeling rather cheered, "but it was
not intended for any one, Do you see? It was just a love letter."

"Oh," he said. "Of course. It is often done. And after that?"

"Well, it had to go somewhere. At least I felt that way about it. So I
made up a name from some malted milk tablets----"

"Malted milk tablets!" he said, looking bewildered.

"Just as I was thinking up a name to send it to," I explained,
"Hannah--that's mother's maid, you know--brought in some hot milk and
some malted milk tablets, and I took the name from them."

"Look here," he said, "I'm unpredjudiced and quite calm, but isn't the
`mother's maid' rather piling it on?"

"Hannah is mother's maid, and she brought in the milk and the tablets,
I should think," I said, growing sarcastic, "that so far it is clear to
the dullest mind."

"Go on," he said, leaning back and closing his eyes. "You named the
letter for your mother's maid--I mean for the malted milk. Although you
have not yet stated the name you chose; I never heard of any one named
Milk, and as to the other, while I have known some rather thoroughly
malted people--however, let that go."

"Valentine's tablets," I said. "Of Course, you understand," I said,
bending forward, "there was no such Person. I made him up. The Harold
was made up too--Harold Valentine."

"I see. Not clearly, perhaps, but I have a gleam of intellagence."

"But, after all, there was such a person. That's clear, isn't it? And
now he considers that we are engaged, and--and he insists on marrying
me."

"That," he said, "is realy easy to understand. I don't blame him at all.
He is clearly a person of diszernment."

"Of course," I said bitterly, "you would be on HIS side. Every one is."

"But the point is this," he went on. "If you made him up out of the
whole cloth, as it were, and there was no such Person, how can there
be such a Person? I am merely asking to get it all clear in my head. It
sounds so reasonable when you say it, but there seems to be something
left out."

"I don't know how he can be, but he is," I said, hopelessly. "And he is
exactly like his picture."

"Well, that's not unusual, you know."

"It is in this case. Because I bought the picture in a shop, and just
pretended it was him. (He?) And it WAS."

He got up and paced the floor.

"It's a very strange case," he said. "Do you mind if I light a
cigarette? It helps to clear my brain. What was the name you gave him?"

"Harold Valentine. But he is here under another name, because of my
Familey. They think I am a mere child, you see, and so of course he took
a NOM DE PLUME."

"A NOM DE PLUME? Oh I see! What is it?"

"Grosvenor," I said. "The same as yours."

"There's another Grosvenor in the building, That's where the trouble
came in, I suppose, Now let me get this straight. You wrote a letter,
and somehow or other he got it, and now you want it back. Stripped of
the things that baffle my intellagence, that's it, isn't it?"

I rose in excitement.

"Then, if he lives in the building, the letter is probably here. Why
can't you go and get it for me?"

"Very neat! And let you slip away while I am gone?"

I saw that he was still uncertain that I was telling him the truth. It
was maddening. And only the Letter itself could convince him.

"Oh, please try to get it," I cried, almost weeping. "You can lock me in
here, if you are afraid I will run away. And he is out. I know he is. He
is at the Club ball."

"Naturaly," he said "the fact that you are asking me to compound a
felony, commit larceny, and be an accessery after the fact does not
trouble you. As I told you before, all I have left is my good name, and
now----!"

"Please!" I said.

He stared down at me.

"Certainly," he said. "Asked in that tone, Murder would be one of the
easiest things I do. But I shall lock you in."

"Very well," I said meekly. And after I had described it--the Letter--to
him he went out.

I had won, but my triumph was but sackcloth and ashes in my mouth. I had
won, but at what a cost! Ah, how I wished that I might live again the
past few days! That I might never have started on my Path of Deception!
Or that, since my intentions at the start had been so inocent, I had
taken another photograph at the shop, which I had fancied considerably
but had heartlessly rejected because of no mustache.

He was gone for a long time, and I sat and palpatated. For what if H.
had returned early and found him and called in the Police?

But the latter had not occurred, for at ten minutes after one he came
back, eutering by the window from a fire-escape, and much streaked with
dirt.

"Narrow escape, dear child!" he observed, locking the window and drawing
the shade. "Just as I got it, your--er--gentleman friend returned and
fitted his key in the lock. I am not at all sure," he said, wiping his
hands with his handkerchief, "that he will not regard the open window
as a suspicious circumstance. He may be of a low turn of mind. However,
all's well that ends here in this room. Here it is."

I took it, and my heart gave a great leap of joy. I was saved.

"Now," he said, "we'll order a taxicab and get you home. And while it is
coming suppose you tell me the thing over again. It's not as clear to me
as it ought to be, even now."

So then I told him--about not being out yet, and Sis having flowers sent
her, and her room done over, and never getting to bed until dawn.
And that they treated me like a mere Child, which was the reason for
everything, and about the Poem, which he considered quite good. And then
about the Letter.

"I get the whole thing a bit clearer now," he said. "Of course, it
is still cloudy in places. The making up somebody to write to is
understandable, under the circumstances. But it is odd to have had the
very Person materialise, so to speak. It makes me wonder--well, how
about burning the Letter, now we've got it? It would be better, I think.
The way things have been going with you, if we don't destroy it, it is
likely to walk off into somebody else's pocket and cause more trouble."

So we burned it, and then the telephone rang and said the taxi was
there.

"I'll get my coat and be ready in a jiffey," he said, "and maybe we can
smuggle you into the house and no one the wiser. We'll try anyhow."

He went into the other room and I sat by the fire and thought. You
remember that when I was planning Harold Valentine, I had imagined him
with a small, dark mustache, and deep, passionate eyes? Well, this
Mr. Grosvenor had both, or rather, all three. And he had the loveliest
smile, with no dimple. He was, I felt, exactly the sort of man I could
die for.

It was too tradgic that, with all the world to choose from, I had not
taken him instead of H.

We walked downstairs, so as not to give the elevator boy a chance to
talk, he said. But he was asleep again, and we got to the street and to
the taxicab without being seen.

Oh, I was very cheerful. When I think of it--but I might have known, all
along. Nothing went right with me that week.

Just before we got to the house he said:

"Goodnight and goodbye, little Barbara. I'll never forget you and this
evening. And save me a dance at your coming-out party. I'll be there."

I held out my hand, and he took it and kissed it. It was all perfectly
thrilling. And then we drew up in front of the house and he helped me
out, and my entire Familey had just got out of the motor and was lined
up on the pavment staring at us!

"All right, are you?" he said, as coolly as if they had not been
anywhere in sight. "Well, good night and good luck!" And he got into the
taxicab and drove away, leaving me in the hands of the Enemy.

The next morning I was sent back to school. They never gave me a chance
to explain, for mother went into hysterics, after accusing me of having
men dangling around waiting at every corner. They had to have a doctor,
and things were awful.

The only person who said anything was Sis. She came to my room that
night when I was in bed, and stood looking down at me. She was very
angry, but there was a sort of awe in her eyes.

"My hat's off to you, Barbara," she said. "Where in the world do you
pick them all up? Things must have changed at school since I was there."

"I'm sick to death of the Other Sex," I replied languidley. "It's no
punishment to send me away. I need a little piece and quiet." And I did.


CONCLUSION:

All this holaday week, while the girls are away, I have been writing
this Theme, for Literature class. To-day is New Years and I am putting
in the finishing touches. I intend to have it tiped in the village and
to send a copy to father, who I think will understand, and another copy,
but with a few lines cut, to Mr. Grosvenor. The nice one. There were
some things he did not quite understand, and this will explain.

I shall also send a copy to Carter Brooks, who came out handsomly with
an apoligy this morning in a letter and a ten pound box of Candy.

His letter explains everything. H. is a real person and did not come
out of a Cabinet. Carter recognized the photograph as being one of a
Mr. Grosvenor he went to college with, who had gone on the stage and
was playing in a stock company at home. Only they were not playing Xmas
week, as business, he says, is rotten then. When he saw me writing the
letter he felt that it was all a bluff, especialy as he had seen me
sending myself the violets at the florists.

So he got Mr. Grosvenor, the blonde one, to pretend he was Harold
Valentine. Only things slipped up. I quote from Carter's letter:


"He's a bully chap, Bab, and he went into it for a lark, roses and poems
and all. But when he saw that you took it rather hard, he felt it wasn't
square. He went to your father to explain and apologized, but your
father seemed to think you needed a lesson. He's a pretty good Sport,
your father. And he said to let it go on for a day or two. A little
worry wouldn't hurt you."


However, I do not call it being a good sport to see one's daughter
perfectly wreched and do nothing to help. And more than that, to
willfully permit one's child to suffer, and enjoy it.

But it was father, after all, who got the Jolt, I think, when he saw me
get out of the taxicab.

Therefore I will not explain, for a time. A little worry will not hurt
him either.

I will not send him his copy for a week.

Perhaps, after all, I will give him somthing to worry about eventually.
For I have recieved a box of roses, with no card, but a pen and ink
drawing of a Gentleman in evening clothes crawling onto a fire-escape
through an open window. He has dropped his Heart, and it is two floors
below.

My narative has now come to a conclusion, and I will close with a few
reflections drawin from my own sad and tradgic Experience. I trust the
Girls of this School will ponder and reflect.

Deception is a very sad thing. It starts very easy, and without Warning,
and everything seems to be going all right, and No Rocks ahead. When
suddenly the Breakers loom up, and your frail Vessel sinks, with you on
board, and maybe your dear Ones, dragged down with you.

Oh, what a tangeled Web we wieve,
When first we practice to decieve.
Sir Walter Scott.




CHAPTER II

THEME: THE CELEBRITY

WE have been requested to write, during this vacation, a true and
varacious account of a meeting with any Celebrity we happened to meet
during the summer. If no Celebrity, any interesting character would do,
excepting one's own Familey.

But as one's own Familey is neither celebrated nor interesting, there is
no temptation to write about it.

As I met Mr. Reginald Beecher this summer, I have chosen him as my
Subject.

Brief history of the Subject: He was born in 1890 at Woodbury, N. J.
Attended public and High Schools, and in 1910 graduated from Princeton
University.

Following year produced first Play in New York, called Her Soul.
Followed this by the Soul Mate, and this by The Divorce.

Description of Subject. Mr. Beecher is tall and slender, and wears a
very small dark Mustache. Although but twenty-six years of age, his hair
on close inspection reveals here and there a Silver Thread. His teeth
are good, and his eyes amber, with small flecks of brown in them. He has
been vacinated twice.

It has alwavs been one of my chief ambitions to meet a Celebrity. On one
or two occasions we have had them at school, but they never sit at the
Junior's table. Also, they are seldom connected with either the Drama
or The Movies (a slang term but aparently taking a place in our
Literature).

It was my intention, on being given this subject for my midsummer theme,
to seek out Mrs. Bainbridge, a lady Author who has a cottage across the
bay from ours, and to ask the privelege of sitting at her feet for a few
hours, basking in the sunshine of her presence, and learning from her
own lips her favorite Flower, her favorite Poem and the favorite child
of her Brain.

Of all those arts in which the wise excel,
Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.
Duke of Buckingham

I had meant to write my Theme on her, but I learned in time that she
was forty years of age. Her work is therefore done. She has passed her
active years, and I consider that it is not the past of American Letters
which is at stake, but the future. Besides, I was more interested in the
Drama than in Literature.

Posibly it is owing to the fact that the girls think I resemhle Julia
Marlowe, that from my earliest years my mind has been turned toward the
Stage. I am very determined and fixed in my ways, and with me to decide
to do a thing is to decide to do it. I am not of a romantic Nature,
however, and as I learned of the dangers of the theater, I drew back.
Even a strong nature, such as mine is, on occassions, can be influenced.
I therefore decided to change my plans, and to write Plays instead of
acting in them.

At first I meant to write Comedies, but as I realized the graveity
of life, and its bitterness and disapointments, I turned naturaly to
Tradgedy. Surely, as dear Shakspeare says:

The world is a stage
Where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.

This explains my sinsere interest in Mr. Beecher. His Works were all
realistic and sad. I remember that I saw the first one three years ago,
when a mere Child, and became violently ill from crying and had to be
taken home.

The school will recall that last year I wrote a Play, patterned on The
Divorce, and that only a certain narowness of view on the part of the
faculty prevented it being the Class Play. If I may be permited to
express an opinion, we of the class of 1917 are not children, and should
not be treated as such.

Encouraged by the Aplause of my class-mates, and feeling that I was of
a more serious turn of mind than most of them, who seem to think of
pleasure only, I decided to write a play during the summer. I would
thus be improving my Vacation hours, and, I considered, keeping out of
mischeif. It was pure idleness which had caused my Trouble during the
last Christmas holidays. How true it is that the Devil finds work for
idle Hands!

With a Play and this Theme I beleived that the Devil would give me up as
a totle loss, and go elsewhere.

How little we can read the Future!

I now proceed to an account of my meeting and acquaintence with Mr.
Beecher. It is my intention to conceal nothing. I can only comfort
myself with the thought that my Motives were inocent, and that I was
obeying orders and secureing material for a theme. I consider that the
atitude of my Familey is wrong and cruel, and that my sister Leila,
being only 20 months older, although out in Society, has no need to
write me the sort of letters she has been writing. Twenty months is
twenty months, and not two years, although she seems to think it is.

I returned home full of happy plans for my vacation. When I look back it
seems strange that the gay and inocent young girl of the train can have
been!. So much that is tradgic has since happened. If I had not had a
cinder in my eye things would have been diferent. But why repine? Fate
frequently hangs thus on a single hair--an eye-lash, as one may say.

Father met me at the train. I had got the aformentioned cinder in my
eye, and a very nice young man had taken it out for me. I still cannot
see what harm there was in our chating together after that, especialy as
we said nothing to object to. But father looked very disagreeable about
it, and the young man went away in a hurry. But it started us off wrong,
although I got him--father--to promise not to tell mother.

"I do wish you would be more careful, Bab," he said with a sort of sigh.

"Careful!" I said. "Then it's not doing Things, but being found out,
that matters!"

"Careful in your conduct, Bab."

"He was a beautiful young man, father," I observed, sliping my arm
through his.

"Barbara, Barbara! Your poor mother----"

"Now look here, father" I said. "If it was mother who was interested in
him it might be troublesome. But it is only me. And I warn you, here and
now, that I expect to be thrilled at the sight of a Nice Young Man right
along. It goes up my back and out the roots of my hair."

Well, my father is a real Person, so he told me to talk sense, and gave
me twenty dollars, and agreed to say nothing about the young man to
mother, if I would root for Canada against the Adirondacks for the
summer, because of the Fishing.

Mother was waiting in the hall for me, but she held me off with both
hands.

"Not until you have bathed and changed your clothing, Barbara," she
said. "I have never had it."

She meant the whooping cough. The school will recall the epademic which
ravaged us last June, and changed us from a peaceful institution to what
sounded like a dog show.

Well, I got the same old room, not much fixed up, but they had put up
diferent curtains anyhow, thank goodness. I had been hinting all spring
for new Furnature, but my Familey does not take a hint unless it is
cloroformed first, and I found the same old stuff there.

They beleive in waiting until a girl makes her Debut before giving her
anything but the necessarys of life.

Sis was off for a week-end, but Hannah was there, and I kissed her. Not
that I'm so fond of her, but I had to kiss sombody.

"Well, Miss Barbara!" she said. "How you've grown!"

That made me rather sore, because I am not a child any longer, but they
all talk to me as if I were but six years old, and small for my age.

"I've stopped growing, Hannah," I said, with dignaty. "At least, almost.
But I see I still draw the nursery."

Hannah was opening my suitcase, and she looked up and said: "I tried to
get you the Blue room, Miss Bab. But Miss Leila said she needed it for
house Parties."

"Never mind," I said. "I don't care anything about Furnature. I have
other things to think about, Hannah; I want the school room Desk up
here."

"Desk!" she said, with her jaw drooping.

"I am writing now," I said. "I need a lot of ink, and paper, and a good
Lamp. Let them keep the Blue room, Hannah, for their selfish purposes. I
shall be happy in my work. I need nothing more."

"Writing!" said Hannah. "Is it a book you're writing?"

"A Play."

"Listen to the child! A Play!"

I sat on the edge of the bed.

"Listen, Hannah," I said. "It is not what is outside of us that matters.
It is what is inside. It is what we are, not what we eat, or look like,
or wear. I have given up everything, Hannah, to my Career."

"You're young yet," said Hannah. "You used to be fond enough of the
Boys."

Hannah has been with us for years, so she gets rather talkey at times,
and has to be sat upon.

"I care nothing whatever for the Other Sex," I replied hautily.

She was opening my suitcase at the time, and I was surveying the chamber
which was to be the seen of my Literary Life, at least for some time.

"Now and then," I said to Hannah, "I shall read you parts of it. Only
you mustn't run and tell mother."

"Why not?" said she, pearing into the Suitcase.

"Because I intend to deal with Life," I said. "I shall deal with real
Things, and not the way we think them. I am young, but I have thought a
great deal. I shall minse nothing."

"Look here, Miss Barbara," Hannah said, all at once, "what are you doing
with this whiskey Flask? And these socks? And--you come right here, and
tell me where you got the things in this Suitcase." I stocked over to
the bed, and my blood frose in my vains. IT WAS NOT MINE.

Words cannot fully express how I felt. While fully convinsed that there
had been a mistake, I knew not when or how. Hannah was staring at me
with cold and accusing eyes.

"You're a very young Lady, Miss Barbara," she said, with her eyes full
of Suspicion, "to be carrying a Flask about with you." I was as puzzled
as she was, but I remained calm and to all apearances Spartan.

"I am young in years," I remarked. "But I have seen Life, Hannah."

Now I meant nothing by this at the time. But it was getting on my nerves
to be put in the infant class all the time. The Xmas before they had
done it, and I had had my revenge. Although it had hurt me more than it
hurt them, and if I gave them a fright I gave myself a worse one. As I
said at that time:

Oh, what a tangeled web we weive,
When first we practice to decieve.
Sir Walter Scott.

Hannah gave me a horrafied Glare, and dipped into the Suitcase again.
She brought up a tin box of Cigarettes, and I thought she was going to
have delerium tremens at once.

Well, at first I thought the girls at school had played a Trick on me,
and a low down mean Trick at that. There are always those who think it
is funny to do that sort of thing, but they are the first to squeel when
anything is done to them. Once I put a small garter Snake in a girl's
muff, and it went up her sleave, which is nothing to some of the things
she had done to me. And you would have thought the School was on fire.

Anyhow, I said to myself that some Smarty was trying to get me into
trouble, and Hannah would run to the Familey, and they'd never beleive
me. All at once I saw all my cherished plans for the summer gone, and
me in the Country somewhere with Mademoiselle, and walking through the
pasture with a botany in one hand and a folding Cup in the other, in
case we found a spring a cow had not stepped in. Mademoiselle was
once my Governess, but has retired to private life, except in cases of
emergency.

I am naturaly very quick in mind. The Archibalds are all like that, and
when once we decide on a Course we stick to it through thick and
thin. But we do not lie. It is rediculous for Hannah to say I said the
cigarettes were mine. All I said was:

"I suppose you are going to tell the Familey. You'd better run, or
you'll burst."

"Oh, Miss Barbara, Miss Barbara!" she said. "And you so young to be so
wild!"

This was unjust, and I am one to resent injustice. I had returned home
with my mind fixed on serious Things, and now I was being told I was
wild.

"If I tell your mother she'll have a fit," Hannah said, evadently drawn
hither and thither by emotion. "Now see here, Miss Bab, you've just
come Home, and there was trouble at your last vacation that I'm like to
remember to my dieing day. You tell me how those things got there, like
a good girl, and I'll say nothing about them."

I am naturaly sweet in disposition, but to call me a good girl and
remind me of last Xmas holadays was too much. My natural firmness came
to the front.

"Certainly NOT," I said.

"You needn't stick your lip out at me, Miss Bab, that was only giving
you a chance, and forgetting my Duty to help you, not to mention
probably losing my place when the Familey finds out."

"Finds out what?"

"What you've been up to, the stage, and writing plays, and now liquor
and tobacco!"

Now I may be at fault in the Narative that follows. But I ask the school
if this was fair treatment. I had returned to my home full of high
Ideals, only to see them crushed beneath the heal of domestic tyranny.

Necessity is the argument of tyrants;
it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt.

How true are these immortal words.

It was with a firm countenance but a sinking heart that I saw Hannah
leave the room. I had come home inspired with lofty Ambition, and it
had ended thus. Heart-broken, I wandered to the bedside, and let my eyes
fall on the Suitcase, the container of all my woe.

Well, I was surprised, all right. It was not and never had been mine.
Instead of my blue serge sailor suit and my ROBE DE NUIT and kimona
etc., it contained a checked gentleman's suit, a mussed shirt and a cap.
At first I was merely astonished. Then a sense of loss overpowered me.
I suffered. I was prostrated with grief. Not that I cared a Rap for
the clothes I'd lost, being most of them to small and patched here and
there. But I had lost the plot of my Play. My Career was gone.