CLASS BY BARBARA PUTNAM ARCHIBALD, 1917.
DEFINITION OF A THEME:
A theme is a piece of writing, either true or made up by the author,
and consisting of Introduction, Body and Conclusion. It should contain
Unity, Coherence, Emphasis, Perspecuity, Vivacity, and Precision. It may
be ornamented with dialogue, description and choice quotations.
SUBJECT OF THEME:
An interesting Incident of My Christmas Holadays.
Introduction:
"A tyrant's power in rigor is exprest."--DRYDEN.
I have decided to relate with precision what occurred during my recent
Christmas holiday. Although I was away from this school only four days,
returning unexpectedly the day after Christmas, a number of Incidents
occurred which I believe I should narrate.
It is only just and fair that the Upper House, at least, should know
of the injustice of my exile, and that it is all the result of
circumstances over which I had no control.
For I make this appeal, and with good reason. Is it any fault of mine
that my sister Leila is 20 months older than I am? Naturally, no.
Is it fair also, I ask, that in the best society, a girl is a Sub-Deb
the year before she comes out, and although mature in mind, and even
maturer in many ways than her older sister, the latter is treated as a
young lady, enjoying many privileges, while the former is treated as a
mere child, in spite, as I have observed, of only 20 months difference?
I wish to place myself on record that it is NOT fair.
I shall go back, for a short time, to the way things were at home when I
was small. I was very strictly raised. With the exception of Tommy Gray,
who lives next door and only is about my age, I was never permitted to
know any of the Other Sex.
Looking back, I am sure that the present way society is organized is
really to blame for everything. I am being frank, and that is the way I
feel. I was too strictly raised. I always had a governess tagging along.
Until I came here to school I had never walked to the corner of the next
street unattended. If it wasn't Mademoiselle, it was mother's maid, and
if it wasn't either of them, it was mother herself, telling me to hold
my toes out and my shoulder blades in. As I have said, I never knew any
of the Other Sex, except the miserable little beasts at dancing school.
I used to make faces at them when Mademoiselle was putting on my
slippers and pulling out my hair bow. They were totally uninteresting,
and I used to put pins in my sash, so that they would get scratched.
Their pumps mostly squeaked, and nobody noticed it, although I have
known my parents to dismiss a Butler who creaked at the table.
When I was sent away to school, I expected to learn something of life.
But I was disappointed. I do not desire to criticize this institution of
learning. It is an excellent one, as is shown by the fact that the best
families send their daughters here. But to learn life one must know
something of both sides of it, male and female. It was, therefore, a
matter of deep regret to me to find that, with the exception of the
dancing master, who has three children, and the gardener, there were no
members of the sterner sex to be seen.
The athletic coach was a girl! As she has left now to be married, I
venture to say that she was not what Lord Chesterfield so euphoniously
termed "SUAVITER IN MODO, FORTATER IN RE."
When we go out to walk we are taken to the country, and the three
matinees a year we see in the city are mostly Shakespeare, arranged for
the young. We are allowed only certain magazines, the Atlantic Monthly
and one or two others, and Barbara Armstrong was penalized for having a
framed photograph of her brother in running clothes.
At the school dances we are compelled to dance with each other, and the
result is that when at home at Holiday parties I always try to lead,
which annoys the boys I dance with.
Notwithstanding all this it is an excellent school. We learn a great
deal, and our dear principal is a most charming and erudite person. But
we see very little of life. And if school is a preparation for life,
where are we?
Being here alone since the day after Christmas, I have had time to think
everything out. I am naturally a thinking person. And now I am no longer
indignant. I realize that I was wrong, and that I am only paying the
penalty that I deserve although I consider it most unfair to be given
French translation to do. I do not object to going to bed at nine
o'clock, although ten is the hour in the Upper House, because I have
time then to look back over things, and to reflect, to think.
"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
SHAKESPEARE.
BODY OF THEME:
I now approach the narrative of what happened during the first four days
of my Christmas Holiday.
For a period before the fifteenth of December, I was rather worried. All
the girls in the school were getting new clothes for Christmas parties,
and their Families were sending on invitations in great numbers, to
various festivities that were to occur when they went home.
Nothing, however, had come for me, and I was worried. But on the 16th
mother's visiting Secretary sent on four that I was to accept, with
tiped acceptances for me to copy and send. She also sent me the good
news that I was to have two party dresses, and I was to send on my
measurements for them.
One of the parties was a dinner and theater party, to be given by Carter
Brooks on New Year's Day. Carter Brooks is the well-known Yale Center,
although now no longer such but selling advertizing, ecetera.
It is tragic to think that, after having so long anticipated that
party, I am now here in sackcloth and ashes, which is a figure of speech
for the Peter Thompson uniform of the school, with plain white for
evenings and no jewelry.
It was with anticipatory joy, therefore, that I sent the acceptances and
the desired measurements, and sat down to cheerfully while away the time
in studies and the various duties of school life, until the Holidays.
However, I was not long to rest in piece, for in a few days I received a
letter from Carter Brooks, as follows:
DEAR BARBARA: It was sweet of you to write me so promptly, although I
confess to being rather astonished as well as delighted at being called
"Dearest." The signature too was charming, "Ever thine." But, dear
child, won't you write at once and tell me why the waist, bust and hip
measurements? And the request to have them really low in the neck? Ever
thine, CARTER.
It will be perceived that I had sent him the letter to mother, by
mistake.
I was very unhappy about it. It was not an auspicious way to begin the
holidays, especially the low neck. Also I disliked very much having told
him my waist measure which is large owing to basket ball.
As I have stated before, I have known very few of the Other Sex, but
some of the girls had had more experience, and in the days before we
went home, we talked a great deal about things. Especially Love. I felt
that it was rather over-done, particularly in fiction. Also I felt and
observed at divers times that I would never marry. It was my intention
to go upon the stage, although modified since by what I am about to
relate.
The other girls say that I look like Julia Marlowe.
Some of the girls had boys who wrote to them, and one of them--I refrain
from giving her name had--a Code. You read every third word. He called
her "Cousin" and he would write like this:
Dear Cousin: I am well. Am just about crazy this week to go home. See
notice enclosed you football game.
And so on and on. Only what it really said was "I am crazy to see you."
(In giving this code I am betraying no secrets, as they have quarreled
and everything is now over between them.)
As I had nobody, at that time, and as I had visions of a career, I was
a man-hater. I acknowledge that this was a pose. But after all, what is
life but a pose?
"Stupid things!" I always said. "Nothing in their heads but football and
tobacco smoke. Women," I said, "are only their playthings. And when they
do grow up and get a little intelligence they use it in making money."
There has been a story in the school--I got it from one of the little
girls--that I was disappointed in love in early youth, the object of my
attachment having been the tenor in our church choir at home. I daresay I
should have denied the soft impeachment, but I did not. It was, although
not appearing so at the time, my first downward step on the path that
leads to destruction.
"The way of the transgressor is hard"--Bible.
I come now to the momentous day of my return to my dear home for
Christmas. Father and my sister Leila, who from now on I will term
"Sis," met me at the station. Sis was very elegantly dressed, and she
said:
"Hello, Kid," and turned her cheek for me to kiss.
She is, as I have stated, but 20 months older than I, and depends
altogether on her clothes for her beauty. In the morning she is plain,
although having a good skin. She was trimmed up with a bouquet of
violets as large as a dishpan, and she covered them with her hands when
I kissed her.
She was waved and powdered, and she had on a perfectly new outfit. And
I was shabby. That is the exact word. Shabby. If you have to hang your
entire wardrobe in a closet ten inches deep, and put it over you on cold
nights, with the steam heat shut off at ten o'clock, it does not make it
look any better.
My father has always been my favorite member of the family, and he was
very glad to see me. He has a great deal of tact, also, and later on he
slipped ten dollars in my purse in the motor. I needed it very much,
as after I had paid the porter and bought luncheon, I had only three
dollars left and an I. O. U. from one of the girls for seventy-five
cents, which this may remind her, if it is read in class, she has
forgotten.
"Good heavens, Barbara," Sis said, while I hugged father, "you certainly
need to be pressed."
"I daresay I'll be the better for a hot iron," I retorted, "but at least
I shan't need it on my hair." My hair is curly while hers is straight.
"Boarding school wit!" she said, and stocked to the motor.
Mother was in the car and glad to see me, but as usual she managed to
restrain her enthusiasm. She put her hands over some orchids she was
wearing when I kissed her. She and Sis were on their way to something or
other.
"Trimmed up like Easter hats, you two!" I said.
"School has not changed you, I fear, Barbara," mother observed. "I hope
you are studying hard."
"Exactly as hard as I have to. No more, no less," I regret to
confess that I replied. And I saw Sis and mother exchange glances of
significance.
We dropped them at the reception and father went to his office and I
went on home alone. And all at once I began to be embittered. Sis had
everything, and what had I? And when I got home, and saw that Sis had
had her room done over, and ivory toilet things on her dressing table,
and two perfectly huge boxes of candy on a stand and a ball gown laid
out on the bed, I almost wept.
My own room was just as I had left it. It had been the night nursery,
and there was still the dent in the mantel where I had thrown a hair
brush at Sis, and the ink spot on the carpet at the foot of the bed, and
everything.
Mademoiselle had gone, and Hannah, mother's maid, came to help me off
with my things. I slammed the door in her face, and sat down on the bed
and RAGED.
They still thought I was a little girl. They PATRONIZED me. I would
hardly have been surprised if they had sent up a bread and milk supper
on a tray. It was then and there that I made up my mind to show them
that I was no longer a mere child. That the time was gone when they
could shut me up in the nursery and forget me. I was seventeen years and
eleven days old, and Juliet, in Shakespeare, was only sixteen when she
had her well-known affair with Romeo.
I had no plan then. It was not until the next afternoon that the thing
sprung (sprang?) fullblown from the head of Jove.
The evening was rather dreary. The family was going out, but not until
nine thirty, and mother and Leila went over my clothes. They sat, Sis
in pink chiffon and mother in black and silver, and Hannah took out my
things and held them up. I was obliged to silently sit by, while my rags
and misery were exposed.
"Why this open humiliation?" I demanded at last. "I am the family
Cinderella, I admit it. But it isn't necessary to lay so much emphasis
on it, is it?"
"Don't be sarcastic, Barbara," said mother. "You are still only a child,
and a very untidy child at that. What do you do with your elbows to rub
them through so? It must have taken patience and application."
"Mother" I said, "am I to have the party dresses?"
"Two. Very simple."
"Low in the neck?"
"Certainly not. A small v, perhaps."
"I've got a good neck." She rose impressively.
"You amaze and shock me, Barbara," she said coldly.
"I shouldn't have to wear tulle around my shoulders to hide the bones!"
I retorted. "Sis is rather thin."
"You are a very sharp-tongued little girl," mother said, looking up at
me. I am two inches taller than she is.
"Unless you learn to curb yourself, there will be no parties for you,
and no party dresses."
This was the speech that broke the camel's back. I could endure no more.
"I think," I said, "that I shall get married and end everything."
Need I explain that I had no serious intention of taking the fatal step?
But it was not deliberate mendacity. It was despair.
Mother actually went white. She clutched me by the arm and shook me.
"What are you saying?" she demanded.
"I think you heard me, mother" I said, very politely. I was however
thinking hard.
"Marry whom? Barbara, answer me."
"I don't know. Anybody."
"She's trying to frighten you, mother" Sis said. "There isn't anybody.
Don't let her fool you."
"Oh, isn't there?" I said in a dark and portentous manner.
Mother gave me a long look, and went out. I heard her go into father's
dressing-room. But Sis sat on my bed and watched me.
"Who is it, Bab?" she asked. "The dancing teacher? Or your riding
master? Or the school plumber?"
"Guess again."
"You're just enough of a little simpleton to get tied up to some wretched
creature and disgrace us all."
I wish to state here that until that moment I had no intention of going
any further with the miserable business. I am naturally truthful,
and deception is hateful to me. But when my sister uttered the above
disparaging remark I saw that, to preserve my own dignity, which I value
above precious stones, I would be compelled to go on.
"I'm perfectly mad about him," I said. "And he's crazy about me."
"I'd like very much to know," Sis said, as she stood up and stared at
me, "how much you are making up and how much is true."
None the less, I saw that she was terrified. The family kitten, to speak
in allegory, had become a lion and showed its claws.
When she had gone out I tried to think of some one to hang a love affair
to. But there seemed to be nobody. They knew perfectly well that the
dancing master had one eye and three children, and that the clergyman at
school was elderly, with two wives. One dead.
I searched my past, but it was blameless. It was empty and bare, and
as I looked back and saw how little there had been in it but imbibing
wisdom and playing basket-ball and tennis, and typhoid fever when I
was fourteen and almost having to have my head shaved, a great wave of
bitterness agitated me.
"Never again," I observed to myself with firmness. "Never again, if I
have to invent a member of the Other Sex."
At that time, however, owing to the appearance of Hannah with a mending
basket, I got no further than his name.
It was Harold. I decided to have him dark, with a very small black
mustache, and passionate eyes. I felt, too, that he would be jealous.
The eyes would be of the smoldering type, showing the green-eyed
monster beneath.
I was very much cheered up. At least they could not ignore me any more,
and I felt that they would see the point. If I was old enough to have
a lover--especially a jealous one with the aforementioned eyes--I was old
enough to have the necks of my frocks cut out.
While they were getting their wraps on in the lower hall, I counted my
money. I had thirteen dollars. It was enough for a plan I was beginning
to have in mind.
"Go to bed early, Barbara," mother said when they were ready to go out.
"You don't mind if I write a letter, do you?"
"To whom?"
"Oh, just a letter," I said, and she stared at me coldly.
"I daresay you will write it, whether I consent or not. Leave it on the
hall table, and it will go out with the morning mail."
"I may run out to the box with it."
"I forbid your doing anything of the sort."
"Oh, very well," I responded meekly.
"If there is such haste about it, give it to Hannah to mail."
"Very well," I said.
She made an excuse to see Hannah before she left, and I knew THAT I WAS
BEING WATCHED. I was greatly excited, and happier than I had been for
weeks. But when I had settled myself in the library, with the paper
in front of me, I could not think of anything to say in a letter. So I
wrote a poem instead.=
```"To H----
```"Dear love: you seem so far away,
````I would that you were near.
```I do so long to hear you say
```Again, 'I love you, dear.'=
```"Here all is cold and drear and strange
````With none who with me tarry,
```I hope that soon we can arrange
````To run away and marry."=
The last verse did not scan, exactly, but I wished to use the word
"marry" if possible. It would show, I felt, that things were really
serious and impending. A love affair is only a love affair, but marriage
is marriage, and the end of everything.
It was at that moment, 10 o'clock, that the strange thing occurred which
did not seem strange at all at the time, but which developed into so
great a mystery later on. Which was to actually threaten my reason and
which, flying on winged feet, was to send me back here to school the
day after Christmas and put my seed pearl necklace in the safe deposit
vault. Which was very unfair, for what had my necklace to do with it?
And just now, when I need comfort, it--the necklace--would help to
relieve my exile.
Hannah brought me in a cup of hot milk, with a Valentine's malted milk
tablet dissolved in it.
As I stirred it around, it occurred to me that Valentine would be a good
name for Harold. On the spot I named him Harold Valentine, and I wrote
the name on the envelope that had the poem inside, and addressed it to
the town where this school gets its mail.
It looked well written out. "Valentine," also, is a word that naturally
connects itself with AFFAIRS DE COUR. And I felt that I was safe, for as
there was no Harold Valentine, he could not call for the letter at the
post office, and would therefore not be able to cause me any trouble,
under any circumstances. And, furthermore. I knew that Hannah would not
mail the letter anyhow, but would give it to mother. So, even if there
was a Harold Valentine, he would never get it.
Comforted by these reflections, I drank my malted milk, ignorant of
the fact that destiny, "which never swerves, nor yields to men the
helm"--Emerson, was stocking at my heels.
Between sips, as the expression goes, I addressed the envelope to Harold
Valentine, and gave it to Hannah. She went out the front door with it,
as I had expected, but I watched from a window, and she turned right
around and went in the area way. So THAT was all right.
It had worked like a Charm. I could tear my hair now when I think how
well it worked. I ought to have been suspicious for that very reason.
When things go very well with me at the start, it is a sure sign that
they are going to blow up eventually.
Mother and Sis slept late the next morning, and I went out stealthily
and did some shopping. First I bought myself a bunch of violets, with a
white rose in the center, and I printed on the card:
"My love is like a white, white rose. H." And sent it to myself.
It was deception, I acknowledge, but having put my hand to the plow,
I did not intend to steer a crooked course. I would go straight to the
end. I am like that in everything I do. But, on deliberating things
over, I felt that Violets, alone and unsupported, were not enough. I felt
that If I had a photograph, it would make everything more real. After
all, what is a love affair without a picture of the Beloved Object?
So I bought a photograph. It was hard to find what I wanted, but I got
it at last in a stationer's shop, a young man in a checked suit with a
small mustache--the young man, of course, not the suit. Unluckily, he
was rather blonde, and had a dimple in his chin. But he looked exactly
as though his name ought to be Harold.
I may say here that I chose "Harold," not because it is a favorite name
of mine, but because it is romantic in sound. Also because I had never
known any one named Harold and it seemed only discrete.
I took it home in my muff and put it under my pillow where Hannah would
find it and probably take it to mother. I wanted to buy a ring too, to
hang on a ribbon around my neck. But the violets had made a fearful hole
in my thirteen dollars.
I borrowed a stub pen at the stationer's and I wrote on the photograph,
in large, sprawling letters, "To YOU from ME."
"There," I said to myself, when I put it under the pillow. "You look
like a photograph, but you are really a bomb-shell."
As things eventuated, it was. More so, indeed.
Mother sent for me when I came in. She was sitting in front of her
mirror, having the vibrator used on her hair, and her manner was
changed. I guessed that there had been a family counsel over the poem,
and that they had decided to try kindness.
"Sit down, Barbara," she said. "I hope you were not lonely last night?"
"I am never lonely, mother. I always have things to think about."
I said this in a very pathetic tone.
"What sort of things?" mother asked, rather sharply.
"Oh--things," I said vaguely. "Life is such a mess, isn't it?"
"Certainly not. Unless one makes it so."
"But it is so difficult. Things come up and--and it's hard to know what
to do. The only way, I suppose, is to be true to one's belief in one's
self."
"Take that thing off my head and go out, Hannah," mother snapped. "Now
then, Barbara, what in the world has come over you?"
"Over me? Nothing."
"You are being a silly child."
"I am no longer a child, mother. I am seventeen. And at seventeen there
are problems. After all, one's life is one's own. One must decide----"
"Now, Barbara, I am not going to have any nonsense. You must put that
man out of your head."
"Man? What man?"
"You think you are in love with some driveling young Fool. I'm not
blind, or an idiot. And I won't have it."
"I have not said that there is anyone, have I?" I said in a gentle
voice. "But if there was, just what would you propose to do, mother?"
"If you were three years younger I'd propose to spank you." Then I
think she saw that she was taking the wrong method, for she changed her
tactics. "It's the fault of that silly school," she said. (Note:
These are my mother's words, not mine.) "They are hotbeds of sickly
sentimentality. They----"
And just then the violets came, addressed to me. Mother opened them
herself, her mouth set. "My love is like a white, white rose," she said.
"Barbara, do you know who sent these?"
"Yes, mother," I said meekly. This was quite true. I did.
I am indeed sorry to record that here my mother lost her temper, and
there was no end of a fuss. It ended by mother offering me a string of
seed pearls for Christmas, and my party dresses cut V front and back, if
I would, as she phrased it, "put him out of my silly head."
"I shall have to write one letter, mother," I said, "to--to break things
off. I cannot tear myself out of another's life without a word."
She sniffed.
"Very well," she said. "One letter. I trust you to make it only one."
I come now to the next day. How true it is, that "Man's life is but a
jest, a dream, a shadow, bubble, air, a vapor at the best!"
I spent the morning with mother at the dressmakers and she chose two
perfectly spiffing things, one of white chiffon over silk, made modified
Empire, with little bunches of roses here and there on it, and when she
and the dressmaker were haggling over the roses, I took the scissors and
cut the neck of the lining two inches lower in front. The effect was
positively impressive. The other was blue over orchid, a perfectly
passionate combination.
When we got home some of the girls had dropped in, and Carter Brooks
and Sis were having tea in the den. I am perfectly sure that Sis threw
a cigarette in the fire when I went in. When I think of my sitting here
alone, when I have done NOTHING, and Sis playing around and smoking
cigarettes, and nothing said, all for a difference of 20 months, it
makes me furious.
"Let's go in and play with the children, Leila," he said. "I'm feeling
young today."
Which was perfectly silly. He is not Methuselah. Although thinking
himself so, or almost.
Well, they went into the drawing room. Elaine Adams was there waiting
for me, and Betty Anderson and Jane Raleigh. And I hadn't been in the
room five minutes before I knew that they all knew. It turned out later
that Hannah was engaged to the Adams' butler, and she had told him,
and he had told Elaine's governess, who is still there and does the
ordering, and Elaine sends her stockings home for her to darn.
Sis had told Carter, too, I saw that, and among them they had rather
a good time. Carter sat down at the piano and struck a few chords,
chanting "My Love is like a white, white rose."
"Only you know" he said, turning to me, "that's wrong. It ought to be a
'red, red rose.'"
"Certainly not. The word is 'white.'"
"Oh, is it?" he said, with his head on one side. "Strange that both you
and Harold should have got it wrong."
I confess to a feeling of uneasiness at that moment.
Tea came, and Carter insisted on pouring.
"I do so love to pour!" he said. "Really, after a long day's shopping,
tea is the only thing that keeps me going until dinner. Cream or lemon,
Leila dear?"
"Both," Sis said in an absent manner, with her eyes on me. "Barbara,
come into the den a moment. I want to show you mother's Christmas gift."
She stocked in ahead of me, and lifted a book from the table. Under it
was the photograph.
"You wretched child!" she said. "Where did you get that?"
"That's not your affair, is it?"
"I'm going to make it my affair. Did he give it to you?"
"Have you read what's written on it?"
"Where did you meet him?"
I hesitated because I am by nature truthful. But at last I said:
"At school."
"Oh," she said slowly. "So you met him at school! What was he doing
there? Teaching elocution?"
"Elocution!"
"This is Harold, is it?"
"Certainly." Well, he WAS Harold, if I chose to call him that, wasn't
he? Sis gave a little sigh.
"You're quite hopeless, Bab. And, although I'm perfectly sure you want
me to take the thing to mother, I'll do nothing of the sort."
SHE FLUNG IT INTO THE FIRE. I was raging. It had cost me a dollar. It
was quite brown when I got it out, and a corner was burned off. But I
got it.
"I'll thank you to burn your own things," I said with dignity. And I
went back to the drawing room.
The girls and Carter Brooks were talking in an undertone when I got
there. I knew it was about me. And Jane came over to me and put her arm
around me.
"You poor thing!" she said. "Just fight it out. We're all with you."
"I'm so helpless, Jane." I put all the despair I could into my voice.
For after all, if they were going to talk about my private affairs
behind my back, I felt that they might as well have something to talk
about. As Jane's second cousin once removed is in this school and as
Jane will probably write her all about it, I hope this theme is read
aloud in class, so she will get it all straight. Jane is imaginative and
may have a wrong idea of things.
"Don't give in. Let them bully you. They can't really do anything. And
they're scared. Leila is positively sick."
"I've promised to write and break it off," I said in a tense tone.
"If he really loves you," said Jane, "the letter won't matter." There
was a thrill in her voice. Had I not been uneasy at my deceit, I to
would have thrilled.
Some fresh muffins came in just then and I was starving. But I waved
them away, and stood staring at the fire.
I am writing all of this as truthfully as I can. I am not defending
myself. What I did I was driven to, as any one can see. It takes a real
shock to make the average family wake up to the fact that the youngest
daughter is not the family baby at seventeen. All I was doing was
furnishing the shock. If things turned out badly, as they did, it
was because I rather overdid the thing. That is all. My motives were
perfectly irreproachable.
Well, they fell on the muffins like pigs, and I could hardly stand it.
So I wandered into the den, and it occurred to me to write the letter
then. I felt that they all expected me to do something anyhow.
If I had never written the wretched letter things would be better now.
As I say, I overdid. But everything had gone so smoothly all day that I
was deceived. But the real reason was a new set of furs. I had secured
the dresses and the promise of the necklace on a poem and a photograph,
and I thought that a good love letter might bring a muff. It all shows
that it does not do to be grasping.
HAD I NOT WRITTEN THE LETTER, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO TRAGEDY.
But I wrote it and if I do say it, it was a LETTER. I commenced it
"Darling," and I said I was mad to see him, and that I would always love
him. But I told him that the family objected to him, and that this was
to end everything between us. They had started the phonograph in the
library, and were playing "The Rosary." So I ended with a verse from
that. It was really a most affecting letter. I almost wept over it
myself, because, if there had been a Harold, it would have broken his
Heart.
Of course I meant to give it to Hannah to mail, and she would give it to
mother. Then, after the family had read it and it had got in its work,
including the set of furs, they were welcome to mail it. It would go
to the dead letter office, since there was no Harold. It could not come
back to me, for I had only signed it "Barbara." I had it all figured out
carefully. It looked as if I had everything to gain, including the furs,
and nothing to lose. Alas, how little I knew!
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft allay." Burns.
Carter Brooks ambled into the room just as I sealed it and stood gazing
down at me.
"You're quite a Person these days, Bab," he said. "I suppose all the
customary Xmas kisses are being saved this year for what's his name."
"I don't understand you."
"For Harold. You know, Bab, I think I could bear up better if his name
wasn't Harold."
"I don't see how it concerns you," I responded.
"Don't you? With me crazy about you for lo, these many years! First as
a baby, then as a sub-sub-deb, and now as a sub-deb. Next year, when you
are a real debutante----"
"You've concealed your infatuation bravely."
"It's been eating me inside. A green and yellow melancholy--hello! A
letter to him!"
"Why, so it is," I said in a scornful tone.
He picked it up, and looked at it. Then he started and stared at me.
"No!" he said. "It isn't possible! It isn't old Valentine!"
Positively, my knees got cold. I never had such a shock.
"It--it certainly is Harold Valentine," I said feebly.
"Old Hal!" he muttered. "Well, who would have thought it! And not a word
to me about it, the secretive old duffer!" He held out his hand to me.
"Congratulations, Barbara," he said heartily. "Since you absolutely
refuse me, you couldn't do better. He's the finest chap I know. If it's
Valentine the family is kicking up such a row about, you leave it to
me. I'll tell them a few things."
I was stunned. Would anybody have believed it? To pick a name out of the
air, so to speak, and off a malted milk tablet, and then to find that it
actually belonged to some one--was sickening.
"It may not be the one you know" I said desperately. "It--it's a common
name. There must be plenty of Valentines."
"Sure there are, lace paper and cupids--lots of that sort. But there's
only one Harold Valentine, and now you've got him pinned to the wall!
I'll tell you what I'll do, Barbara. I'm a real friend of yours. Always
have been. Always will be. The chances are against the family letting
him get this letter. I'll give it to him."
"GIVE it to him?"
"Why, he's here. You know that, don't you? He's in town over the
holidays."
"Oh, no!" I said in a gasping Voice.
"Sorry," he said. "Probably meant it as a surprise to you. Yes, he's
here, with bells on."
He then put the letter in his pocket before my very eyes, and sat down
on the corner of the writing table!
"You don't know how all this has relieved my mind," he said. "The poor
chap's been looking down. Not interested in anything. Of course this
explains it. He's the sort to take Love hard. At college he took
everything hard--like to have died once with German measles."
He picked up a book, and the charred picture was underneath. He pounced
on it. "Pounced" is exactly the right word.
"Hello!" he said, "family again, I suppose. Yes, it's Hal, all right.
Well, who would have thought it!"
My last hope died. Then and there I had a nervous chill. I was compelled
to prop my chin on my hand to keep my teeth from chattering.
"Tell you what I'll do," he said, in a perfectly cheerful tone that
made me cold all over. "I'll be the cupid for your Valentine. See?
Far be it from me to see love's young dream wiped out by a hardhearted
family. I'm going to see this thing through. You count on me, Barbara.
I'll arrange that you get a chance to see each other, family or no
family. Old Hal has been looking down his nose long enough. When's your
first party?"
"Tomorrow night," I gasped out.
"Very well. Tomorrow night it is. It's the Adams', isn't it, at the
Club?"
I could only nod. I was beyond speaking. I saw it all clearly. I had
been wicked in deceiving my dear family and now I was to pay the
penalty. He would know at once that I had made him up, or rather he did
not know me and therefore could not possibly be in Love with me. And
what then?
"But look here," he said, "if I take him there as Valentine, the family
will be on, you know. We'd better call him something else. Got any
choice as to a name?"
"Carter" I said frantically. "I think I'd better tell you. I----"
"How about calling him Grosvenor?". he babbled on. "Grosvenor's a good
name. Ted Grosvenor--that ought to hit them between the eyes. It's going
to be rather a lark, Miss Bab!"
And of course just then mother came in, and the Brooks idiot went in
and poured her a cup of tea, with his little finger stuck out at a right
angel, and every time he had a chance he winked at me.
I wanted to die.
When they had all gone home it seemed like a bad dream, the whole thing.
It could not be true. I went upstairs and manicured my nails, which
usually comforts me, and put my hair up like Leila's.
But nothing could calm me. I had made my own fate, and must lie in it.
And just then Hannah slipped in with a box in her hands and her eyes
frightened.
"Oh, Miss Barbara!" she said. "If your mother sees this!"
I dropped my manicure scissors, I was so alarmed. But I opened the box,
and clutched the envelope inside. It said "from H----." Then Carter was
right. There was an H after all!
Hannah was rolling her hands in her apron and her eyes were popping out
of her head.
"I just happened to see the boy at the door," she said, with her silly
teeth chattering. "Oh, Miss Barbara, if Patrick had answered the bell!
What shall we do with them?"
"You take them right down the back stairs," I said. "As if it was an
empty box. And put it outside with the waist papers. Quick."
She gathered the thing up, but of course mother had to come in just
then and they met in the doorway. She saw it all in one glance, and she
snatched the card out of my hand.
"From H----!" she read. "Take them out, Hannah, and throw them away. No,
don't do that. Put them on the Servant's table." Then, when the door
had closed, she turned to me. "Just one more ridiculous episode of this
kind, Barbara," she said, "and you go back to school--Christmas or no
Christmas."
I will say this. If she had shown the faintest softness, I'd have told
her the whole thing. But she did not. She looked exactly as gentle as a
macadam pavement. I am one who has to be handled with gentleness. A
kind word will do anything with me, but harsh treatment only makes me
determined. I then become inflexible as iron.
That is what happened then. Mother took the wrong course and threatened,
which as I have stated is fatal, as far as I am concerned. I refused
to yield an inch, and it ended in my having my dinner in my room, and
mother threatening to keep me home from the party the next night. It was
not a threat, if she had only known it.
But when the next day went by, with no more flowers, and nothing
apparently wrong except that mother was very dignified with me, I began
to feel better. Sis was out all day, and in the afternoon Jane called me
up.
"How are you?" she said.
"Oh, I'm all right."
"Everything smooth?"
"Well, smooth enough."
"Oh, Bab," she said. "I'm just crazy about it. All the girls are."
"I knew they were crazy about something."
"You poor thing, no wonder you are bitter," she said. "Somebody's
coming. I'll have to ring off. But don't you give in, Bab. Not an inch.
Marry your heart's desire, no matter who butts in."
Well, you can see how it was. Even then I could have told father and
mother, and got out of it somehow. But all the girls knew about it, and
there was nothing to do but go on.
All that day every time I thought of the Party my heart missed a beat.
But as I would not lie and say that I was ill--I am naturally truthful,
as far as possible--I was compelled to go, although my heart was
breaking.
I am not going to write much about the party, except a slight
description, which properly belongs in every theme.
All Parties for the school set are alike. The boys range from
knickerbockers to college men in their freshmen year, and one is likely
to dance half the evening with youngsters that one saw last in their
perambulators. It is rather startling to have about six feet of black
trouser legs and white shirt front come and ask one to dance and then
to get one's eyes raised as far as the top of what looks like a
particularly thin pair of tree trunks and see a little boy's face.
As this theme is to contain description I shall describe the ball room
of the club where the eventful party occurred.
The ball room is white, with red hangings, and looks like a Charlotte
Russe with maraschino cherries. Over the fireplace they had put "Merry
Christmas," in electric lights, and the chandeliers were made into
Christmas trees and hung with colored balls. One of the balls fell
off during the cotillion, and went down the back of one of the girl's
dresses, and they were compelled to up-end her and shake her out in the
dressing room.
The favors were insignificant, as usual. It is not considered good taste
to have elaborate things for the school crowd. But when I think of the
silver things Sis always brought home, and remember that I took away
about six Christmas stockings, a toy balloon, four whistles, a wooden
canary in a cage and a box of talcum powder, I feel that things are not
fair in this World.
Hannah went with me, and in the motor she said:
"Oh, Miss Barbara, do be careful. The family is that upset."
"Don't be a silly," I said. "And if the family is half as upset as I
am, it is throwing a fit at this minute."
We were early, of course. My mother believes in being on time, and
besides, she and Sis wanted the motor later. And while Hannah was on her
knees taking off my carriage boots, I suddenly decided that I could not
go down. Hannah turned quite pale when I told her.
"What will your mother say?" she said. "And you with your new dress and
all! It's as much as my life is worth to take you back home now, Miss
Barbara."
Well, that was true enough. There would be a riot if I went home, and I
knew it.
"I'll see the steward and get you a cup of tea," Hannah said. "Tea sets
me up like anything when I'm nervous. Now please be a good girl, Miss
Barbara, and don't run off, or do anything foolish."
She wanted me to promise, but I would not, although I could not have run
anywhere. My legs were entirely numb.
In a half hour at the utmost I knew all would be known, and very likely
I would be a homeless wanderer on the earth. For I felt that never, never
could I return to my dear ones, when my terrible actions became known.
Jane came in while I was sipping the tea and she stood off and eyed me
with sympathy.
"I don't wonder, Bab!" she said. "The idea of your family acting so
outrageously! And look here" She bent over me and whispered it. "Don't
trust Carter too much. He is perfectly infatuated with Leila, and he
will play into the hands of the enemy. BE CAREFUL."
"Loathsome creature!" was my response. "As for trusting him, I trust no
one, these days."
"I don't wonder your faith is gone," she observed. But she was talking
with one eye on a mirror.
"Pink makes me pale," she said. "I'll bet the maid has a drawer full of
rouge. I'm going to see. How about a touch for you? You look ghastly."
"I don't care how I look," I said, recklessly. "I think I'll sprain my
ankle and go home. Anyhow I am not allowed to use rouge."
"Not allowed!" she observed. "What has that got to do with it? I don't
understand you, Bab; you are totally changed."
"I am suffering," I said. I was to.
Just then the maid brought me a folded note. Hannah was hanging up my
wraps, and did not see it. Jane's eyes fairly bulged.
"I hope you have saved the cotillion for me," it said. And it was
signed. H----!
"Good gracious," Jane said breathlessly. "Don't tell me he is here, and
that that's from him!"
I had to swallow twice before I could speak. Then I said, solemnly:
"He is here, Jane. He has followed me. I am going to dance the cotillion
with him although I shall probably be disinherited and thrown out into
the world, as a result."
I have no recollection whatever of going down the staircase and into the
ballroom. Although I am considered rather brave, and once saved one of
the smaller girls from drowning, as I need not remind the school, when
she was skating on thin ice, I was frightened. I remember that, inside
the door, Jane said "Courage!" in a low tense voice, and that I stepped
on somebody's foot and said "Certainly" instead of apologizing. The
shock of that brought me around somewhat, and I managed to find Mrs.
Adams and Elaine, and not disgrace myself. Then somebody at my elbow
said:
"All right, Barbara. Everything's fixed."
It was Carter.
"He's waiting in the corner over there," he said. "We'd better go
through the formality of an introduction. He's positively twittering
with excitement."
"Carter" I said desperately. "I want to tell you something first. I've
got myself in an awful mess. I----"
"Sure you have," he said. "That's why I'm here, to help you out. Now
you be calm, and there's no reason why you two can't have the evening of
your young lives. I wish I could fall in love. It must be bully."
"Carter----!"
"Got his note, didn't you?"
"Yes, I----"
"Here we are," said Carter. "Miss Archibald, I would like to present Mr.
Grosvenor."
Somebody bowed in front of me, and then straightened up and looked down
at me. IT WAS THE MAN OF THE PICTURE, LITTLE MUSTACHE AND ALL. My mouth
went perfectly dry.
It is all very well to talk about Romance and Love, and all that sort
of thing. But I have concluded that amorous experiences are not always
agreeable. And I have discovered something else. The moment anybody is
crazy about me I begin to hate him. It is curious, but I am like that. I
only care as long as they, or he, is far away. And the moment I touched
H's white kid glove, I knew I loathed him.
"Now go to it, you two," Carter said in cautious tone. "Don't be
conspicuous. That's all."
And he left us.
"Suppose we dance this. Shall we?" said H. And the next moment we were
gliding off. He danced very well. I will say that. But at the time I was
too much occupied with hating him to care about dancing, or anything.
But I was compelled by my pride to see things through. We are a very
proud family and never show our troubles, though our hearts be torn
with anguish.
"Think," he said, when we had got away from the band, "think of our
being together like this!"
"It's not so surprising, is it? We've got to be together if we are
dancing."
"Not that. Do you know, I never knew so long a day as this has been. The
thought of meeting you--er--again, and all that."
"You needn't rave for my benefit," I said freezingly. "You know
perfectly well that you never saw me before."
"Barbara! With your dear little letter in my breast pocket at this
moment!"
"I didn't know men had breast pockets in their evening clothes."
"Oh well, have it your own way. I'm too happy to quarrel," he said. "How
well you dance--only, let me lead, won't you? How strange it is to think
that we have never danced together before!"
"We must have a talk," I said desperately. "Can't we go somewhere, away
from the noise?"
"That would be conspicuous, wouldn't it, under the circumstances? If we
are to overcome the family objection to me, we'll have to be cautious,
Barbara."
"Don't call me Barbara," I snapped. "I know perfectly well what you
think of me, and I----"
"I think you are wonderful," he said. "Words fail me when I try to tell
you what I am thinking. You've saved the cotillion for me, haven't you?
If not, I'm going to claim it anyhow. IT IS MY RIGHT."
He said it in the most determined manner, as if everything was settled.
I felt like a rat in a trap, and Carter, watching from a corner, looked
exactly like a cat. If he had taken his hand in its white glove and
washed his face with it, I would hardly have been surprised.
The music stopped, and somebody claimed me for the next. Jane came up,
too, and clutched my arm.
"You lucky thing!" she said. "He's perfectly handsome. And oh, Bab, he's
wild about you. I can see it in his eyes."
"Don't pinch, Jane," I said coldly. "And don't rave. He's an idiot."
She looked at me with her mouth open.
"Well, if you don't want him, pass him on to me," she said, and walked
away.
It was too silly, after everything that had happened, to dance the next
dance with Willie Graham, who is still in knickerbockers, and a full
head shorter than I am. But that's the way with a Party for the school
crowd, as I've said before. They ask all ages, from perambulators up,
and of course the little boys all want to dance with the older girls. It
is deadly stupid.
But H seemed to be having a good time. He danced a lot with Jane, who
is a wretched dancer, with no sense of time whatever. Jane is not pretty,
but she has nice eyes, and I am not afraid, second cousin once removed
or no second cousin once removed, to say she used them.
Altogether, it was a terrible evening. I danced three dances out of four
with knickerbockers, and one with old Mr. Adams, who is fat and rotates
his partner at the corners by swinging her on his waistcoat. Carter did
not dance at all, and every time I tried to speak to him he was taking a
crowd of the little girls to the fruit-punch bowl.
I determined to have things out with H during the cotillion, and tell
him that I would never marry him, that I would die first. But I was
favored a great deal, and when we did have a chance the music was making
such a noise that I would have had to shout. Our chairs were next to the
band.
But at last we had a minute, and I went out to the verandah, which was
closed in with awnings. He had to follow, of course, and I turned and
faced him.
"Now" I said, "this has got to stop."
"I don't understand you, Bab."
"You do, perfectly well," I stormed. "I can't stand it. I am going
crazy."
"Oh," he said slowly. "I see. I've been dancing too much with the
little girl with the eyes! Honestly, Bab, I was only doing it to disarm
suspicion. MY EVERY THOUGHT IS OF YOU."
"I mean," I said, as firmly as I could, "that this whole thing has got
to stop. I can't stand it."
"Am I to understand," he said solemnly, "that you intend to end
everything?"
I felt perfectly wild and helpless.
"After that Letter!" he went on. "After that sweet Letter! You said, you
know, that you were mad to see me, and that--it is almost too sacred
to repeat, even to YOU--that you would always love me. After that
Confession I refuse to agree that all is over. It can NEVER be over."
"I daresay I am losing my mind," I said. "It all sounds perfectly
natural. But it doesn't mean anything. There CAN'T be any Harold
Valentine; because I made him up. But there is, so there must be. And I
am going crazy."
"Look here," he stormed, suddenly quite raving, and throwing out his
right hand. It would have been terribly dramatic, only he had a glass of
punch in it. "I am not going to be played with. And you are not going to
jilt me without a reason. Do you mean to deny everything? Are you going
to say, for instance, that I never sent you any violets? Or gave you my
Photograph, with an--er--touching inscription on it?" Then, appealingly,
"You can't mean to deny that Photograph, Bab!"
And then that lanky wretch of an Eddie Perkins brought me a toy balloon,
and I had to dance, with my heart crushed.
Nevertheless, I ate a fair supper. I felt that I needed Strength. It was
quite a grown-up supper, with bullion and creamed chicken and baked ham
and sandwiches, among other things. But of course they had to show it
was a 'kid' party, after all. For instead of coffee we had milk.
Milk! When I was going through a tragedy. For if it is not a tragedy
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
perambulator. It was sickening.
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 Christmas favors--and was
fumbling about for it.
"You are tired and unnerved 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 attention 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 goings on. You're only a little girl, with all your
high and mightiness, and there's going to be no scandal in this family
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
changeable 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 fatally--"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 illumination 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 Christmas. I got a lot of things, including the necklace,
and a mending basket from Sis, with the hope that it would make me
tidy, and father had bought me a set of silver fox, which mother
did not approve of, it being too expensive 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 terrible. 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 poinsettias.
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 proceeded to open it.
My heart skipped two beats, and then hammered. 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 terrible voice. "To Barbara, from
H----"
"Mother----" I began, in an earnest tone.
"A child of mine receiving such a book from a man!" she went on.
"Barbara, I am speechless."
But she was not speechless. If she was speechless 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 believe 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 catalog. "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 terrible. It rained solid sheets, and Patrick, the
butler, gave notice three hours after he had received his Christmas
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 jammed, 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 sickly 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 surprise 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 sensitive. You've got to remember how sensitive 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 two, 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 rotating
waistcoat. But I was desperate.
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 handkerchief 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 family 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, especially as
my face was very sad and tragic.
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 believe my ears.
He approached me with a smiling face.
"Well, Bab," he said, exactly as if nothing had happened, "have you had
a nice day?"
He had the eyes of a basilisk, that creature of fable.
"I've had a lovely day, Father," I replied. I could be basilisk-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 height. "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 sentiment.
"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
equivalent for it, and you look like a figure of tragedy!"
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 retrieved." 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 respectable looking men went up and examined it, and
one even measured it with a Tape-measure.
She had materialized 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 family 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 agreeably 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 guile with guile. 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 unusually lucky and
not the sort of thing to look forward to.
With me, to think is to act. Hannah was out, it being Christmas 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 Christmas Night!" he burbled. (This is a
word from Alice in Wonder Land, and although not in the dictionary, 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
family 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 believe
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
terrible 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 family.
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 subtle, 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 evidently 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 desperation.
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 sufficient
foresight to prepare an alibi. In case there was someone present in the
apartment I intended to tell a falsehood, 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 strangely 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 deceive 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 terrible 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 diplomacy. But can you prove what you say?"
"My word should be sufficient," 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 believe 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 fury.
"Ah! Then it is not YOUR letter!"
"I wrote it."
"But to simulate a passion that does not exist--that is sacrilege. 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."
"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 judicial, 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 unprejudiced 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 intelligence."
"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 really easy to understand. I don't blame him at all.
He is clearly a person of discernment."
"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
family. 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 intelligence, 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."
"Naturally," he said "the fact that you are asking me to compound a
felony, commit larceny, and be an accessory 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 innocent, 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 palpitated. 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, entering 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 materialize, 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 jiffy," 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 tragic 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 family had just got out of the motor and was lined
up on the pavement 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 languidly. "It's no
punishment to send me away. I need a little piece and quiet." And I did.
CONCLUSION:
All this holiday 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 typed 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 handsomely with
an apology 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
Christmas week, as business, he says, is rotten then. When he saw me
writing the letter he felt that it was all a bluff, especially 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 wretched 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 something to worry about eventually.
For I have received 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 narrative has now come to a conclusion, and I will close with a few
reflections drawn from my own sad and tragic 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 tangled Web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive.
Sir Walter Scott.