Bab: A Sub-Deb (9 page)

"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 aud 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?"

"I do not care for any dinner," I replied. Then, seeing she did not understand, I said coldly. "How can I care for food, mother, when the Sea looks like a dying ople?"

"Dying pussycat!" mother said, in a very nasty way. "I don't know what has come over you, Barbara. You used to be a normle Child, and there was some accounting for what you were going to do. But now! Take off that nightgown, and I'll have Tanney hold off dinner for half an hour."

Tanney was the butler who had taken Patrick's place.

"If you insist," I said coldly. "But I shall not eat."

"Why not?"

"You wouldn't understand, mother."

"Oh, I wouldn't? Well, suppose I try," she said, and sat down. "I am not very intellagent, but if you put it clearly I may grasp it. Perhaps you'd better speak slowly, also."

So, sitting there in my room, while the sea throbed in tireless beats against the shore, while the light faded and the stars issued, one by one, like a rash on the Face of the sky, I told mother of my dreams. I intended, I said, to write Life as it realy is, and not as supposed to be.