Bab: A Sub Deb

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


I was undone.

It may be asked what has this Recitle to do with the account of meeting
a Celebrity. I reply that it has a great deal to do with it. A bare
recitle of a meeting may be News, but it is not Art.

A theme consists of Introduction, Body and Conclusion.

This is still the Introduction.

When I was at last revived enough to think I knew what had happened. The
young man who took the Cinder out of my eye had come to sit beside
me, which I consider was merely kindness on his part and nothing like
Flirting, and he had brought his Suitcase over, and they had got mixed
up. But I knew the Familey would call it Flirting, and not listen to a
word I said.

A madness siezed me. Now that everything is over, I realize that it was
madness. But "there is a divinity that shapes our ends etc." It was to
be. It was Karma, or Kismet, or whatever the word is. It was written in
the Book of Fate that I was to go ahead, and wreck my life, and generaly
ruin everything.

I locked the door behind Hannah, and stood with tradgic feet, "where the
brook and river meet." What was I to do? How hide this evadence of
my (presumed) duplicaty? I was inocent, but I looked gilty. This, as
everyone knows, is worse than gilt.

I unpacked the Suitcase as fast as I could, therfore, and being just
about destracted, I bundled the things up and put them all together in
the toy Closet, where all Sis's dolls and mine are, mine being mostly
pretty badly gone, as I was always hard on dolls.

How far removed were those Inocent Years when I played with dolls!

Well, I knew Hannah pretty well, and therfore was not surprised when,
having hidden the trowsers under a doll buggy, I heard mother's voice at
the door.

"Let me in, Barbara," she said.

I closed the closet door, and said: "What is it, mother?"

"Let me in."

So I let her in, and pretended I expected her to kiss me, which she
had not yet, on account of the whooping cough. But she seemed to have
forgotten that. Also the Kiss.

"Barbara," she said, in the meanest voice, "how long have you been
smoking?"

Now I must pause to explain this. Had mother aproached me in a sweet
and maternal manner, I would have been softened, and would have told the
Whole Story. But she did not. She was, as you might say, steeming with
Rage. And seeing that I was misunderstood, I hardened. I can be as hard
as adamant when necessary.

"What do you mean, mother?"

"Don't anser one question with another."

"How can I anser when I don't understand you?"

She simply twiched with fury.

"You--a mere Child!" she raved. "And I can hardly bring myself to
mention it--the idea of your owning a Flask, and bringing it into this
house--it is--it is----"

Well, I was growing cold and more hauty every moment, so I said: "I
don't see why the mere mention of a Flask upsets you so. It isn't
because you aren't used to one, especialy when traveling. And since I
was a mere baby I have been acustomed to intoxicants."

"Barbara!" she intergected, in the most dreadful tone.

"I mean, in the Familey," I said. "I have seen wine on our table ever
since I can remember. I knew to put salt on a claret stain before I
could talk."

Well, you know how it is to see an Enemy on the run, and although I
regret to refer to my dear mother as an Enemy, still at that moment she
was such and no less. And she was beating it. It was the referance to
my youth that had aroused me, and I was like a wounded lion. Besides, I
knew well enough that if they refused to see that I was practicaly grown
up, if not entirely, I would get a lot of Sis's clothes, fixed up with
new ribbons. Faded old things! I'd had them for years.

Better to be considered a bad woman than an unformed child.

"However, mother," I finished, "if it is any comfort to you, I did not
buy that Flask. And I am not a confirmed alcoholic. By no means."

"This settles it," she said, in a melancoly tone. "When I think of the
comfort Leila has been to me, and the anxiety you have caused, I wonder
where you get your--your DEVILTRY from. I am posatively faint."

I was alarmed, for she did look queer, with her face all white around
the Rouge. So I reached for the Flask.

"I'll give you a swig of this," I said. "It will pull you around in no
time."

But she held me off feircely.

"Never!" she said. "Never again. I shall emty the wine cellar. There
will be nothing to drink in this house from now on. I do not know what
we are coming to."

She walked into the bathroom, and I heard her emptying the Flask down
the drain pipe. It was a very handsome Flask, silver with gold stripes,
and all at once I knew the young man would want it back. So I said:

"Mother, please leave the Flask here anyhow."

"Certainly not."

"It's not mine, mother."

"Whose is it?"

"It--a friend of mine loned it to me."

"Who?"

"I can't tell you."

"You can't TELL me! Barbara, I am utterly bewildered. I sent you away a
simple child, and you return to me--what?"

Well, we had about an hour's fight over it, and we ended in a
compromise. I gave up the Flask, and promised not to smoke and so forth,
and I was to have some new dresses and a silk Sweater, and to be allowed
to stay up until ten o'clock, and to have a desk in my room for my work.

"Work!" mother said. "Career! What next? Why can't you be like Leila,
and settle down to haveing a good time?"

"Leila and I are diferent," I said loftily, for I resented her tone.
"Leila is a child of the moment. Life for her is one grand, sweet Song.
For me it is a serious matter. `Life is real, life is earnest, and the
Grave is not its goal,'" I quoted in impasioned tones.

(Because that is the way I feel. How can the Grave be its goal? THERE
MUST BE SOMETHING BEYOND. I have thought it all out, and I beleive in a
world beyond, but not in a hell. Hell, I beleive, is the state of mind
one gets into in this world as a result of one's wicked Acts or one's
wicked Thoughts, and is in one's self.)

As I have said, the other side of the Compromise was that I was not to
carry Flasks with me, or drink any punch at parties if it had a stick
in it, and you can generally find out by the taste. For if it is what
Carter Brooks calls "loaded" it stings your tongue. Or if it tastes like
cider it's probably Champane. And I was not to smoke any cigarettes.

Mother was holding out on the Sweater at that time, saying that Sis had
a perfectly good one from Miami, and why not wear that? So I put up a
strong protest about the cigarettes, although I have never smoked but
once as I think the School knows, and that only half through, owing to
getting dizzy. I said that Sis smoked now and then, because she thought
it looked smart; but that, if I was to have a Career, I felt that the
sootheing influence of tobaco would help a lot.

So I got the new Sweater, and everything looked smooth again, and mother
kissed me on the way out, and said she had not meant to be harsch, but
that my great uncle Putnam had been a notorious drunkard, and I looked
like him, although of a more refined tipe.

There was a dreadful row that night, however, when father came home. We
were all dressed for dinner, and waiting in the drawing room, and Leila
was complaining about me, as usual.

"She looks older than I do now, mother," she said. "If she goes to the
seashore with us I'll have her always taging at my heals. I don't see
why I can't have my first summer in peace." Oh, yes, we were going to
the shore, after all. Sis wanted it, and everybody does what she wants,
regardless of what they prefer, even Fishing.

"First summer!" I exclaimed. "One would think you were a teething baby!"

"I was speaking to mother, Barbara. Everyone knows that a Debutante
only has one year nowadays, and if she doesn't go off in that year she's
swept away by the flood of new Girls the next fall. We might as well
be frank. And while Barbara's not a beauty, as soon as the bones in her
neck get a little flesh on them she won't be hopeless, and she has a
flipant manner that Men like."

"I intend to keep Barbara under my eyes this summer," mother said
firmly. "After last Xmas's happenings, and our Discovery today, I shall
keep her with me. She need not, however, interfere with you, Leila.
Her Hours are mostly diferent, and I will see that her friends are the
younger boys."

I said nothing, but I knew perfectly well she had in mind Eddie Perkins
and Willie Graham, and a lot of other little kids that hang around the
fruit Punch at parties, and throw the peas from the Croquettes at each
other when the footmen are not near, and pretend they are allowed to
smoke, but have sworn off for the summer.

I was naturaly indignant at Sis's words, which were not filial, to my
mind, but I replied as sweetly as possable:

"I shall not be in your way, Leila. I ask nothing but Food and Shelter,
and that perhaps not for long."

"Why? Do you intend to die?" she demanded.

"I intend to work," I said. "It's more interesting than dieing, and will
be a novelty in this House."

Father came in just then, and he said:

"I'll not wait to dress, Clara. Hello, children. I'll just change my
coller while you ring for the Cocktails."

Mother got up and faced him with Magesty.

"We are not going to have, any" she said.

"Any what?" said father from the doorway.

"I have had some fruit juice prepared with a dash of bitters. It is
quite nice. And I'll ask you, James, not to explode before the servants.
I will explain later."

Father has a very nice disposition but I could see that mother's manner
got on his Nerves, as it got on mine. Anyhow there was a terific fuss,
with Sis playing the Piano so that the servants would not hear, and in
the end father had a Cocktail. Mother waited until he had had it, and
was quieter, and then she told him about me, and my having a Flask in
my Suitcase. Of course I could have explained, but if they persisted in
mis-understanding me, why not let them do so, and be miserable?

"It's a very strange thing, Bab," he said, looking at me, "that
everything in this House is quiet until you come home, and then we get
as lively as kittens in a frying pan. We'll have to marry you off pretty
soon, to save our piece of mind."

"James!" said my mother. "Remember last winter, please."

There was no Claret or anything with dinner, and father ordered mineral
water, and criticised the food, and fussed about Sis's dressmaker's
bill. And the second man gave notice immediately after we left the
dining room. When mother reported that, as we were having coffee in the
drawing room, father said:

"Humph! Well, what can you expect? Those fellows have been getting the
best half of a bottle of Claret every night since they've been here, and
now it's cut off. Damed if I wouldn't like to leave myself."

From that time on I knew that I was watched. It made little or no
diference to me. I had my Work, and it filled my life. There were times
when my Soul was so filled with joy that I could hardly bare it. I had
one act done in two days. I wrote out the Love seens in full, because I
wanted to be sure of what they would say to each other. How I thrilled
as each marvelous burst of Fantacy flowed from my pen! But the dialogue
of less interesting parts I left for the actors to fill in themselves.
I consider this the best way, as it gives them a chance to be original,
and not to have to say the same thing over and over.

Jane Raleigh came over to see me the day after I came home, and I read
her some of the Love seens. She posatively wept with excitement.

"Bab," she said, "if any man, no matter who, ever said those things to
me, I'd go straight into his arms. I couldn't help it. Whose going to
act in it?"

"I think I'll have Robert Edeson, or Richard Mansfield."

"Mansfield's dead," said Jane.

"Honestly?"

"Honest he is. Why don't you get some of these moveing picture actors?
They never have a chance in the Movies, only acting and not talking."

Well, that sounded logicle. And then I read her the place where the
cruel first husband comes back and finds her married again and happy,
and takes the Children out to drown them, only he can't because they can
swim, and they pull him in instead. The curtain goes down on nothing but
a few bubbles rising to mark his watery Grave.

Jane was crying.

"It is too touching for words, Bab!" she said. "It has broken my heart.
I can just close my eyes and see the Theater dark, and the stage almost
dark, and just those bubbles coming up and breaking. Would you have to
have a tank?"

"I darsay," I replied dreamily. "Let the other people worry about that.
I can only give them the material, and hope that they have intellagence
enough to grasp it."

I think Sis must have told Carter Brooks something about the trouble I
was in, for he brought me a box of Candy one afternoon, and winked at me
when mother was not looking.

"Don't open it here," he whispered.

So I was forced to controll my impatience, though passionately fond of
Candy. And when I got to my room later, the box was full of cigarettes.
I could have screamed. It just gave me one more thing to hide, as if a
man's suit and shirt and so on was not suficient.

But Carter paid more attention to me than he ever had before, and at
a tea dance sombody had at the Country Club he took me to one side and
gave me a good talking to.

"You're being rather a bad child, aren't you?" he said.

"Certainly not."

"Well, not bad, but--er--naughty. Now see here, Bab, I'm fond of you,
and you're growing into a mightey pretty girl. But your whole Social
Life is at stake. For heaven's sake, at least until you're married, cut
out the cigarettes and booze."

That cut me to the heart, but what could I say?

Well, July came, and we had rented a house at Little Hampton and
everywhere one went one fell over an open trunk or a barrell containing
Silver or Linen.

Mother went around with her lips moving as if in prayer, but she was
realy repeating lists, such as sowing basket, table candles, headache
tablets, black silk stockings and tennis rackets.

Sis got some lovely Clothes, mostly imported, but they had a woman come
in and sow for me. Hannah and she used to interupt my most precious
Moments at my desk by running a tape measure around me, or pinning a
paper pattern to me. The sowing woman always had her mouth full of Pins,
and once, owing to my remarking that I wished I had been illagitimate,
so I could go away and live my own life, she swallowed one. It caused a
grate deal of excitement, with Hannah blaming me and giving her vinigar
to swallow to soften the pin. Well, it turned out all right, for she
kept on living, but she pretended to have sharp pains all over her here
and there, and if the pin had been as lively as a tadpole and wriggled
from spot to spot, it could not have hurt in so many Places.

Of course they blamed me, and I shut myself up more and more in my
Sanctuery. There I lived with the creatures of my dreams, and forgot for
a while that I was only a Sub-Deb, and that Leila's last year's tennis
clothes were being fixed over for me.

But how true what dear Shakspeare says:

dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain.
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.

I loved my dreams, but alas, they were not enough. After a tortured
hour or two at my desk, living in myself the agonies of my characters,
suffering the pangs of the wife with two husbands and both living,
struggling in the water with the children, fruit of the first union,
dying with number two and blowing my last Bubbles heavenward--after all
these emotions, I was done out.

Jane came in one day and found me prostrate on my couch, with a light of
sufering in my eyes.

"Dearest!" cried Jane, and gliding to my side, fell on her knees.

"Jane!"

"What is it? You are ill?"

I could hardly more than whisper. In a low tone I said:

"He is dead."

"Dearest!"

"Drowned!"

At first she thought I meant a member of my Familey. But when she
understood she looked serious.

"You are too intence, Bab," she said solemly. "You suffer too much. You
are wearing yourself out."

"There is no other way," I replied in broken tones.

Jane went to the Mirror and looked at herself. Then she turned to me.

"Others don't do it."

"I must work out my own Salvation, Jane," I observed firmly. But she had
roused me from my apathy, and I went into Sis's room, returning with
a box of candy some one had sent her. "I must feel, Jane, or I cannot
write."

"Pooh! Loads of writers get fat on it. Why don't you try Comedy? It pays
well."

"Oh--MONEY!" I said, in a disgusted tone.

"Your FORTE, of course, is Love," she said. "Probably that's because
you've had so much experience." Owing to certain reasons it is generaly
supposed that I have experienced the gentle Passion. But not so, alas!
"Bab," Jane said, suddenly, "I have been your friend for a long time. I
have never betrayed you. You can trust me with your Life. Why don't you
tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"Somthing has happened. I see it in your eyes. No girl who is happy
and has not a tradgic story stays at home shut up at a messy desk when
everyone is out at the Club playing tennis. Don't talk to me about a
Career. A girl's Career is a man and nothing else. And especialy after
last winter, Bab. Is--is it the same one?"

Here I made my fatal error. I should have said at once that there was
no one, just as there had been no one last Winter. But she looked so
intence, sitting there, and after all, why should I not have an amorus
experience? I am not ugly, and can dance well, although inclined to lead
because of dansing with other girls all winter at school. So I lay back
on my pillow and stared at the ceiling.

"No. It is not the same man."

"What is he like? Bab, I'm so excited I can't sit still."

"It--it hurts to talk about him," I observed faintly.

Now I intended to let it go at that, and should have, had not Jane kept
on asking Questions. Because I had had a good lesson the winter before,
and did not intend to decieve again. And this I will say--I realy told
Jane Raleigh nothing. She jumped to her own conclusions. And as for her
people saying she cannot chum with me any more, I will only say this: If
Jane Raleigh smokes she did not learn it from me.

Well, I had gone as far as I meant to. I was not realy in love with
anyone, although I liked Carter Brooks, and would posibly have loved him
with all the depth of my Nature if Sis had not kept an eye on me most of
the time. However----

Jane seemed to be expecting somthing, and I tried to think of some
way to satisfy her and not make any trouble. And then I thought of the
Suitcase. So I locked the door and made her promise not to tell, and got
the whole thing out of the Toy Closet.

"Wha--what is it?" asked Jane.

I said nothing, but opened it all up. The Flask was gone, but the
rest was there, and Carter's box too. Jane leaned down and lifted the
trowsers and poked around somewhat. Then she straitened and said:

"You have run away and got married, Bab."

"Jane!"

She looked at me peircingly.

"Don't lie to me," she said accusingly. "Or else what are you doing with
a man's whole Outfit, including his dirty coller? Bab, I just can't bare
it."

Well, I saw that I had gone to far, and was about to tell Jane the truth
when I heard the sowing Woman in the hall. I had all I could do to get
the things put away, and with Jane looking like death I had to stand
there and be fitted for one of Sis's chiffon frocks, with the low neck
filled in with net.

"You must remember, Miss Bab," said the human Pin cushon, "that you are
still a very young girl, and not out yet."

Jane got up off the bed suddenly.

"I--I guess I'll go, Bab," she said. "I don't feel very well."

As she went out she stopped in the Doorway and crossed her Heart,
meaning that she would die before she would tell anything. But I was
not comfortable. It is not a pleasant thought that your best friend
considers you married and gone beyond recall, when in truth you are not,
or even thinking about it, except in idle moments.

The seen now changes. Life is nothing but such changes. No sooner do
we alight on one Branch, and begin to sip the honey from it, but we
are taken up and carried elsewhere, perhaps to the Mountains or to the
Sea-shore, and there left to make new friends and find new methods of
Enjoyment.

The flight--or journey--was in itself an anxious time. For on my
otherwise clear conscience rested the weight of that strange Suitcase.
Fortunately Hannah was so busy that I was left to pack my belongings
myself, and thus for a time my gilty secret was safe. I put my things in
on top of the masculine articles, not daring to leave any of them in the
closet, owing to house-cleaning, which is always done before our return
in the fall.

On the train I had a very unpleasant experience, due to Sis opening my
Suitcase to look for a magazine, and drawing out a soiled gentleman's
coller. She gave me a very peircing Glance, but said nothing and at the
next opportunity I threw it out of a window, concealed in a newspaper.

We now approach the Catastrofe. My book on playwriting divides plays
into Introduction, Development, Crisis, Denouement and Catastrofe. And
so one may devide life. In my case the Cinder proved the Introduction,
as there was none other. I consider that the Suitcase was the
Development, my showing it to Jane Raleigh was the Crisis, and the
Denouement or Catastrofe occured later on.

Let us then procede to the Catastrofe.

Jane Raleigh came to see me off at the train. Her Familey was coming the
next day. And instead of Flowers, she put a small bundel into my hands.
"Keep it hiden, Bab," she said, "and tear up the card."

I looked when I got a chance, and she had crocheted me a wash cloth,
with a pink edge. "For your linen Chest," the card said, "and I'm doing
a bath towle to match."

I tore up the Card, but I put the wash cloth with the other things I
was trying to hide, because it is bad luck to throw a Gift away. But I
hoped, as I seemed to be getting more things to conceal all the time,
that she would make me a small bath towle, and not the sort as big as a
bed spread.

Father went with us to get us settled, and we had a long talk while
mother and Sis made out lists for Dinners and so forth.

"Look here, Bab," he said, "somthing's wrong with you. I seem to have
lost my only boy, and have got instead a sort of tear-y young person I
don't recognize."

"I'm growing up, father" I said. I did not mean to rebuke him, but ye
gods! Was I the only one to see that I was no longer a Child?

"Somtimes I think you are not very happy with us."

"Happy?" I pondered. "Well, after all, what is happiness?"

He took a spell of coughing then, and when it was over he put his arms
around me and was quite afectionate.

"What a queer little rat it is!" he said.

I only repeat this to show how even my father, with all his afection and
good qualities, did not understand and never would understand. My
Heart was full of a longing to be understood. I wanted to tell him my
yearnings for better things, my aspirations to make my life a great and
glorious thing. AND HE DID NOT UNDERSTAND.

He gave me five dollars instead. Think of the Tradgedy of it!

As we went along, and he pulled my ear and finaly went asleep with a
hand on my shoulder, the bareness of my Life came to me. I shook with
sobs. And outside somewhere Sis and mother made Dinner lists. Then and
there I made up my mind to work hard and acheive, to become great and
powerful, to write things that would ring the Hearts of men--and women,
to, of course--and to come back to them some day, famous and beautiful,
and when they sued for my love, to be kind and hauty, but cold. I felt
that I would always be cold, although gracious.

I decided then to be a writer of plays first, and then later on to act
in them. I would thus be able to say what came into my head, as it was
my own play. Also to arrange the seens so as to wear a variety of gowns,
including evening things. I spent the rest of the afternoon manacuring
my nails in our state room.

Well, we got there at last. It was a large house, but everything was
to thin about it. The School will understand this, the same being the
condition of the new Freshman dormitory. The walls were to thin, and so
were the floors. The Doors shivered in the wind, and palpatated if you
slamed them. Also you could hear every Sound everywhere.

I looked around me in dispair. Where, oh where, was I to find my
cherished solatude? Where?

On account of Hannah hating a new place, and considering the house an
insult to the Servants, especialy only one bathroom for the lot of them,
she let me unpack alone, and so far I was safe. But where was I to work?
Fate settled that for me however.

There is no armour against fate;
Death lays his icy hand on Kings.

J. Shirley; Dirge.

Previously, however, mother and I had had a talk. She sailed into my
room one evening, dressed for dinner, and found me in my ROBE DE NUIT,
curled up in the window seat admiring the view of the ocean.

"Well!" she said. "Is this the way you intend going to dinner?"