Bab: A Sub Deb

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




CHAPTER III

HER DIARY: BEING THE DAILY JOURNAL OF THE SUB-DEB

JANUARY 1st. I have today recieved this dairy from home, having come
back a few days early to make up a French Condition.

Weather, clear and cold.

New Year's dinner. Roast chicken (Turkey being very expencive), mashed
Turnips, sweet Potatos and minse Pie.

It is my intention to record in this book the details of my Daily Life,
my thoughts which are to sacred for utterence, and my ambitions. Because
who is there to whom I can speak them? I am surounded by those who
exist for the mere Pleasures of the day, or whose lives are bound up in
Resitations.

For instance, at dinner today, being mostly faculty and a few girls
who live in the Far West, the conversation was entirely on buying a
Phonograph for dancing because the music teacher has the meazles and
is quarentined in the infirmery. And on Miss Everett's couzin, who has
written a play.

When one looks at Miss Everett, one recognises that no couzin of hers
could write a play.

New Year's resolution--to help some one every day. Today helped
Mademoiselle to put on her rubers.


JANUARY 2ND. Today I wrote my French theme, beginning, "Les hommes
songent moins a leur AME QU A leur CORPS." Mademoiselle sent for me and
objected, saying that it was not a theme for a young girl, and that I
must write a new one, on the subject of pears. How is one to develope in
this atmosphere?

Some of the girls are coming back. They stragle in, and put the favers
they got at Cotillions on the dresser, and their holaday gifts, and each
one relates some amorus experience while at home. Dear dairy, is there
somthing wrong with me, that Love has passed me by? I have had offers
of Devotion but none that apealed to me, being mostly either to young or
not atracting me by physicle charm. I am not cold, although frequently
acused of it, Beneath my fridgid Exterior beats a warm heart. I intend
to be honest in this dairy, and so I admit it. But, except for passing
Fansies--one being, alas, for a married man--I remain without the Divine
Passion.

What must it be to thrill at the aproach of the loved Form? To harken
to each ring of the telephone bell, in the hope that, if it is not
the Idolised Voice, it is at least a message from it? To waken in the
morning and, looking around the familiar room, to muze: "Today I may see
him--on the way to the Post Office, or rushing past in his racing car."
And to know that at the same moment HE to is muzing: "Today I may see
her, as she exercises herself at basket ball, or mounts her horse for a
daily canter!"

Although I have no horse. The school does not care for them, considering
walking the best exercise.

Have flunked the French again, Mademoiselle not feeling well, and
marking off for the smallest Thing.

Today's helpfull Deed--asisted one of the younger girls with her
spelling.


JANUARY 4TH. Miss Everett's couzin's play is coming here. The school is
to have free tickets, as they are "trying it on the dog." Which means
seeing if it is good enough for the large cities.

We have desided, if Everett marks us well in English from now on, to
aplaud it, but if she is unpleasent, to sit still and show no interest.


JANUARY 5TH, 6TH, 7TH, 8TH. Bad weather, which is depressing to one of
my Temperment. Also boil on noze.

A few helpfull Deeds--nothing worth putting down.


JANUARY 9TH. Boil cut.

Again I can face my Image in my mirror, and not shrink.

Mademoiselle is sick and no French. MISERICORDE!

Helpfull Deed--sent Mademoiselle some fudge, but this school does not
encourage kindness. Reprimanded for cooking in room. School sympathises
with me. We will go to Miss Everett's couzin's play, but we will dam it
with faint praise.


JANUARY 10TH. I have written this Date, and now I sit back and regard
it. As it is impressed on this white paper, so, Dear Dairy, is it
written on my Soul. To others it may be but the tenth of January. To me
it is the day of days. Oh, tenth of January! Oh, Monday. Oh, day of my
awakning!

It is now late at night, and around me my schoolmates are sleeping the
sleep of the young and Heart free. Lights being off, I am writing by the
faint luminocity of a candle. Propped up in bed, my mackinaw coat over
my ROBE DE NUIT for warmth, I sit and dream. And as I dream I still hear
in my ears his final words: "My darling. My woman!"

How wonderfull to have them said to one Night after Night, the while
being in his embrase, his tender arms around one! I refer to the heroine
in the play, to whom he says the above raptureous words.

Coming home from the theater tonight, still dazed with the revelation of
what I am capable of, once aroused, I asked Miss Everett if her couzin
had said anything about Mr. Egleston being in love with the Leading
Character. She observed:

"No. But he may be. She is very pretty."

"Possably," I remarked. "But I should like to see her in the morning,
when she gets up."

All the girls were perfectly mad about Mr. Egleston, although pretending
merely to admire his Art. But I am being honest, as I agreed at the
start, and now I know, as I sit here with the soft, although chilly
breeses of the night blowing on my hot brow, now I know that this thing
that has come to me is Love. Morover, it is the Love of my Life. He will
never know it, but I am his. He is exactly my Ideal, strong and tall and
passionate. And clever, to. He said some awfuly clever things.

I beleive that he saw me. He looked in my direction. But what does it
matter? I am small, insignifacant. He probably thinks me a mere child,
although seventeen.

What matters, oh Dairy, is that I am at last in Love. It is hopeless.
Just now, when I had written that word, I buried my face in my hands.
There is no hope. None. I shall never see him again. He passed out of my
life on the 11:45 train. But I love him. MON DIEU, how I love him!


JANUARY 11TH. We are going home. WE ARE GOING HOME. WE ARE GOING HOME.
WE ARE GOING HOME!

Mademoiselle has the meazles.


JANUARY 13TH. The Familey managed to restrain its ecstacy on seeing me
today. The house is full of people, as they are having a Dinner-Dance
tonight. Sis had moved into my room, to let one of the visitors have
hers, and she acted in a very unfilial manner when she came home and
found me in it.

"Well!" she said. "Expelled at last?"

"Not at all," I replied in a lofty manner. "I am here through no fault
of my own. And I'd thank you to have Hannah take your clothes off my
bed."

She gave me a bitter glanse.

"I never knew it to fail!" she said. "Just as everything is fixed, and
we're recovering from you're being here for the Holadays, you come back
and stir up a lot of trouble. What brought you, anyhow?"

"Meazles."

She snached up her ball gown.

"Very well," she said. "I'll see that you're quarentined, Miss Barbara,
all right. And If you think you're going to slip downstairs tonight
after dinner and WORM yourself into this party, I'll show you."

She flounsed out, and shortly afterwards mother took a minute from the
Florest, and came upstairs.

"I do hope you are not going to be troublesome, Barbara," she said. "You
are too young to understand, but I want everything to go well tonight,
and Leila ought not to be worried."

"Can't I dance a little?"

"You can sit on the stairs and watch." She looked fidgity. "I--I'll
send up a nice dinner, and you can put on your dark blue, with a fresh
collar, and--it ought to satisfy you, Barbara, that you are at home and
posibly have brought the meazles with you, without making a lot of fuss.
When you come out----"

"Oh, very well," I murmured, in a resined tone. "I don't care enough
about it to want to dance with a lot of Souses anyhow."

"Barbara!" said mother.

"I suppose you have some one on the String for her," I said, with the
ABANDON of my thwarted Hopes. "Well, I hope she gets him. Because if not
I darsay I shall be kept in the Cradle for years to come."

"You will come out when you reach a proper Age," she said, "if your
Impertanence does not kill me off before my Time."

Dear Dairy, I am fond of my mother, and I felt repentent and stricken.

So I became more agreable, although feeling all the time that she does
not and never will understand my Temperment. I said:

"I don't care about Society, and you know it, mother. If you'll keep
Leila out of this room, which isn't much but is my Castle while here,
I'll probably go to bed early."

"Barbara, sometimes I think you have no afection for your Sister."

I had agreed to honesty January first, so I replied.

"I have, of course, mother. But I am fonder of her while at school than
at home. And I should be a better Sister if not condemed to her old
things, including hats which do not suit my Tipe."

Mother moved over magestically to the door and shut it. Then she came
and stood over me.

"I've come to the conclusion, Barbara," she said, "to appeal to your
better Nature. Do you wish Leila to be married and happy?"

"I've just said, mother----"

"Because a very interesting thing is happening," said mother, trying to
look playfull. "I--a chance any girl would jump at."

So here I sit, Dear Dairy, while there are sounds of revelery below, and
Sis jumps at her chance, which is the Honorable Page Beres ford, who is
an Englishman visiting here because he has a weak heart and can't fight.
And father is away on business, and I am all alone.

I have been looking for a rash, but no luck.

Ah me, how the strains of the orkestra recall that magic night in the
theater when Adrian Egleston looked down into my eyes and although
ostensably to an actress, said to my beating heart: "My Darling! My
Woman!"


3 A. M. I wonder if I can controll my hands to write.

In mother's room across the hall I can hear furious Voices, and I know
that Leila is begging to have me sent to Switzerland. Let her beg.
Switzerland is not far from England, and in England----

Here I pause to reflect a moment. How is this thing possible? Can I love
to members of the Other Sex? And if such is the Case, how can I go on
with my Life? Better far to end it now, than to perchance marry one, and
find the other still in my heart. The terrable thought has come to me
that I am fickel.

Fickel or polygamus--which?

Dear Dairy, I have not been a good girl. My New Year's Resolutions have
gone to airey nothing.

The way they went was this: I had settled down to a quiet evening,
spent with his beloved picture which I had clipped from a newspaper.
(Adrian's. I had not as yet met the other.) And, as I sat in my chamber,
I grew more and more desolate. I love Life, although pessamistic at
times. And it seemed hard that I should be there, in exile, while my
Sister, only 20 months older, was jumping at her chance below.

At last I decided to try on one of Sis's frocks and see how I looked in
it. I though, if it looked all right, I might hang over the stairs and
see what I then scornfully termed "His Nibs." Never again shall I so
call him.

I got an evening gown from Sis's closet, and it fitted me quite well,
although tight at the waste for me, owing to Basket Ball. It was also
to low, so that when I had got it all hooked about four inches of my
LINGERIE showed. As it had been hard as anything to hook, I was obliged
to take the scizzors and cut off the said LINGERIE. The result was good,
although very DECOLLTE. I have no bones in my neck, or practicaly so.

And now came my moment of temptation. How easy to put my hair up on
my head, and then, by the servant's staircase, make my way to the seen
below!

I, however, considered that I looked pale, although Mature. I looked
at least nineteen. So I went into Sis's room, which was full of evening
wraps but emty, and put on a touch of rouge. With that and my eyebrows
blackend, I would not have known myself, had I not been certain it was I
and no other.

I then made my way down the Back Stairs.

Ah me, Dear Dairy, was that but a few hours ago? Is it but a short time
since Mr. Beresford was sitting at my feet, thinking me a DEBUTANTE,
and staring soulfully into my very heart? Is it but a matter of minutes
since Leila found us there, and in a manner which revealed the true
feeling she has for me, ordered me to go upstairs and take off Maidie
Mackenzie's gown?

(Yes, it was not Leila's after all. I had forgotten that Maidie had
taken her room. And except for pulling it somewhat at the waste, I am
sure I did not hurt the old thing.)

I shall now go to bed and dream. Of which one I know not. My heart is
full. Romanse has come at last into my dull and dreary life. Below, the
revelers have gone. The flowers hang their herbacious heads. The music
has flowed away into the river of the past. I am alone with my Heart.


JANUARY 14TH. How complacated my Life grows, Dear Dairy! How full and
yet how incomplete! How everything begins and nothing ends!

HE is in town.

I discovered it at breakfast. I knew I was in for it, and I got down
early, counting on mother breakfasting in bed. I would have felt better
if father had been at home, because he understands somwhat the way They
keep me down. But he was away about an order for shells (not sea; war),
and I was to bear my chiding alone. I had eaten my fruit and serial, and
was about to begin on sausage, when mother came in, having risen early
from her slumbers to take the decorations to the Hospital.

"So here you are, wreched child!" she said, giving me one of her coldest
looks. "Barbara, I wonder if you ever think whither you are tending."

I ate a sausage.

What, Dear Dairy, was there to say?

"To disobey!" she went on. "To force yourself on the atention of Mr.
Beresford, in a borowed dress, with your eyelashes blackend and your
face painted----"

"I should think, mother," I observed, "that if he wants to marry into
this family, and is not merely being dragged into it, that he ought to
see the worst at the start." She glired, without speaking. "You know," I
continued, "it would be a dreadfull thing to have the Ceramony performed
and everything to late to back out, and then have ME Sprung on him. It
wouldn't be honest, would it?"

"Barbara!" she said in a terrable tone. "First disobedience, and now
sarcasm. If your father was only here! I feel so alone and helpless."

Her tone cut me to the Heart. After all she was my own mother, or at
least maintained so, in spite of numerous questions enjendered by our
lack of resemblence, moral as well as physicle. But I did not offer
to embrase her, as she was at that moment poring out her tea. I hid my
misery behind the morning paper, and there I beheld the fated vision.
Had I felt any doubt as to the state of my afections it was settled
then. My Heart leaped in my bosom. My face sufused. My hands trembled so
that a piece of sausage slipped from my fork. HIS PICTURE LOOKED OUT AT
ME WITH THAT WELL REMEMBERED GAZE FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE MORNING PAPER.

Oh, Adrian, Adrian!

Here in the same city as I, looking out over perchance the same
newspaper to perchance the same sun, wondering--ah, what was he
wondering?

I was not even then, in that first Rapture, foolish about him. I knew
that to him I was probably but a tender memory. I knew, to, that he was
but human and probably very concieted. On the other hand, I pride myself
on being a good judge of character, and he carried Nobility in every
linament. Even the obliteration of one eye by the printer could only
hamper but not destroy his dear face.

"Barbara," mother said sharply. "I am speaking. Are you being sulkey?"

"Pardon me, mother," I said in my gentlest tones. "I was but dreaming."
And as she made no reply, but rang the bell visciously, I went on,
pursuing my line of thought. "Mother, were you ever in Love?"

"Love! What sort of Love?"

I sat up and stared at her.

"Is there more than one sort?" I demanded.

"There is a very silly, schoolgirl Love," she said, eyeing me, "that
people outgrow and blush to look back on."

"Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Do you blush to look back on it?"

Mother rose and made a sweeping gesture with her right arm.

"I wash my hands of you!" she said. "You are impertanent and indelacate.
At your age I was an inocent child, not troubleing with things that did
not concern me. As for Love, I had never heard of it until I came out."

"Life must have burst on you like an explosion," I observed. "I suppose
you thought that babies----"

"Silense!" mother shreiked. And seeing that she persisted in ignoring
the real things of Life while in my presence, I went out, cluching the
precious paper to my Heart.


JANUARY 15TH. I am alone in my BOUDOIR (which is realy the old
schoolroom, and used now for a sowing room).

My very soul is sick, oh Dairy. How can I face the truth? How write it
out for my eyes to see? But I must. For SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. The play
is failing.

The way I discovered it was this. Yesterday, being short of money, I
sold my amethist pin to Jane, one of the housemaids, for two dollars,
throwing in a lace coller when she seemed doubtful, as I had a special
purpose for useing funds. Had father been at home I could have touched
him, but mother is diferent.

I then went out to buy a frame for his picture, which I had repaired by
drawing in the other eye, although licking the Fire and passionate look
of the originle. At the shop I was compeled to show it, to buy a frame
to fit. The clerk was almost overpowered.

"Do you know him?" she asked, in a low and throbing tone.

"Not intimitely," I replied.

"Don't you love the Play?" she said. "I'm crazy about it. I've been back
three times. Parts of it I know off by heart. He's very handsome. That
picture don't do him justise."

I gave her a searching glanse. Was it posible that, without any
acquaintance with him whatever, she had fallen in love with him? It was
indeed. She showed it in every line of her silly face.

I drew myself up hautily. "I should think it would be very expencive,
going so often," I said, in a cool tone.

"Not so very. You see, the play is a failure, and they give us girls
tickets to dress the house. Fill it up, you know. Half the girls in the
store are crazy about Mr. Egleston."

My world shuddered about me. What--fail! That beautiful play, ending "My
darling, my woman"? It could not be. Fate would not be cruel. Was there
no apreciation of the best in Art? Was it indeed true, as Miss Everett
has complained, although not in these exact words, that the Theater was
only supported now by chorus girls' legs, dancing about in uter ABANDON?

With an expression of despair on my features, I left the store, carrying
the Frame under my arm.

One thing is certain. I must see the play again, and judge it with a
criticle eye. IF IT IS WORTH SAVING, IT MUST BE SAVED.


JANUARY 16TH. Is it only a day since I saw you, Dear Dairy? Can so much
have happened in the single lapse of a few hours? I look in my mirror,
and I look much as before, only with perhaps a touch of paller. Who
would not be pale?

I have seen HIM again, and there is no longer any doubt in my heart.
Page Beresford is atractive, and if it were not for circumstances as
they are I would not anser for the consequences. But things ARE as they
are. There is no changing that. And I have reid my own heart.

I am not fickel. On the contrary, I am true as steal.

I have put his Picture under my mattress, and have given Jane my gold
cuff pins to say nothing when she makes my bed. And now, with the house
full of People downstairs acting in a flippent and noisy maner, I shall
record how it all happened.

My finantial condition was not improved this morning, father having not
returned. But I knew that I must see the Play, as mentioned above, even
if it became necesary to borow from Hannah. At last, seeing no other
way, I tried this, but failed.

"What for?" she said, in a suspicous way.

"I need it terrably, Hannah," I said.

"You'd ought to get it from your mother, then, Miss Barbara. The last
time I gave you some you paid it back in postage stamps, and I haven't
written a letter since. They're all stuck together now, and a totle
loss."

"Very well," I said, fridgidly. "But the next time you break
anything----"

"How much do you want?" she asked.

I took a quick look at her, and I saw at once that she had desided to
lend it to me and then run and tell mother, beginning, "I think you'd
ought to know, Mrs. Archibald----"

"Nothing doing, Hannah," I said, in a most dignafied manner. "But I
think you are an old Clam, and I don't mind saying so."

I was now thrown on my own resourses, and very bitter. I seemed to have
no Friends, at a time when I needed them most, when I was, as one may
say, "standing with reluctent feet, where the brook and river meet."

Tonight I am no longer sick of Life, as I was then. My throws of anguish
have departed. But I was then uterly reckless, and even considered
running away and going on the stage myself.

I have long desired a Career for mvself, anyhow. I have a good mind, and
learn easily, and I am not a Paracite. The idea of being such has always
been repugnent to me, while the idea of a few dollars at a time doaled
out to one of independant mind is galling. And how is one to remember
what one has done with one's Allowence, when it is mostly eaten up
by Small Lones, Carfare, Stamps, Church Collection, Rose Water and
Glicerine, and other Mild Cosmetics, and the aditional Food necesary
when one is still growing?

To resume, Dear Dairy; having uterly failed with Hannah, and having
shortly after met Sis on the stairs, I said to her, in a sisterly tone,
intimite rather than fond:

"I darsay you can lend me five dollars for a day or so."

"I darsay I can. But I won't," was her cruel reply.

"Oh, very well," I said breifly. But I could not refrain from making a
grimase at her back, and she saw me in a mirror.

"When I think," she said heartlessly, "that that wreched school may be
closed for weeks, I could scream."

"Well, scream!" I replied. "You'll scream harder if I've brought the
meazles home on me. And if you're laid up, you can say good-bye to the
Dishonorable. You've got him tide, maybe," I remarked, "but not thrown
as yet."

(A remark I had learned from one of the girls, Trudie Mills, who comes
from Montana.)

I was therfore compeled to dispose of my silver napkin ring from school.
Jane was bought up, she said, and I sold it to the cook for fifty cents
and half a minse pie although baked with our own materials.

All my Fate, therfore, hung on a paltrey fifty cents.

I was torn with anxiety. Was it enough? Could I, for fifty cents, steel
away from the sordid cares of life, and lose myself in obliviousness,
gazing only it his dear Face, listening to his dear and softly modulited
Voice, and wondering if, as his eyes swept the audiance, they might
perchance light on me and brighten with a momentary gleam in their
unfathomable Depths? Only this and nothing more, was my expectation.

How diferent was the reality!

Having ascertained that there was a matinee, I departed at an early hour
after luncheon, wearing my blue velvet with my fox furs. White gloves
and white topped shoes completed my outfit, and, my own CHAPEAU showing
the effect of a rainstorm on the way home from church while away at
school, I took a chance on one of Sis's, a perfectly madening one of
rose-colored velvet. As the pink made me look pale, I added a touch of
rouge.

I looked fully out, and indeed almost Second Season. I have a way of
assuming a serious and Mature manner, so that I am frequently taken
for older than I realy am. Then, taking a few roses left from the
decorations, and thrusting them carelessly into the belt of my coat,
I went out the back door, as Sis was getting ready for some girls to
Bridge, in the front of the house.

Had I felt any greif at decieving my Familey, the bridge party would
have knocked them. For, as usual, I had not been asked, although playing
a good game myself, and having on more than one occasion won most of the
money in the Upper House at school.

I was early at the theater. No one was there, and women were going
around taking covers off the seats. My fifty cents gave me a good seat,
from which I opined, alas, that the shop girl had been right and busness
was rotten. But at last, after hours of waiting, the faint tuning of
musicle instruments was heard.

From that time I lived in a daze. I have never before felt so strange.
I have known and respected the Other Sex, and indeed once or twise been
kissed by it. But I had remained Cold. My Pulses had never flutered.
I was always conserned only with the fear that others had overseen
and would perhaps tell. But now--I did not care who would see, if only
Adrian would put his arms about me. Divine shamlessness! Brave Rapture!
For if one who he could not possably love, being so close to her in her
make-up, if one who was indeed employed to be made Love to, could submit
in public to his embrases, why should not I, who would have died for
him?

These were my thoughts as the Play went on. The hours flew on joyous
feet. When Adrian came to the footlights and looking aparently square
at me, declaimed: "The World owes me a living. I will have it," I almost
swooned. His clothes were worn. He looked hungry and ghaunt. But how
true that