Bab: A Sub-Deb (3 page)

"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 truthfull. 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 dignaty. 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 couzin 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 tence 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 deciet, I to would have thrilled.

Some fresh muffins came in just then and I was starveing. 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 Familey wake up to the fact that the youngest daughter is not the Familey 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 ireproachible.

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 decieved. 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 TRADGEDY.

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 Familey 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 aglay." 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 melancholly--hello! A letter to him!"

"Why, so it is," I said in a scornfull 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 Familey 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 beleived it? To pick a name out of the air, so to speak, and off a malted milk tablet, and then to find that it actualy belonged to some one--was sickning.

"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 Familey 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 holadays."

"Oh, no!" I said in a gasping Voice.

"Sorry," he said. "Probably meant it as a surprize 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 releived 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 meazles."

He picked up a book, and the charred picture was underneath. He pounced on it. "Pounced" is exactly the right word.

"Hello!" he said. "Familey 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 cheerfull 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 Familey. 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, Familey or no Familey. 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's, isn't it, at the Club?"

I could only nod. I was beyond speaking. I saw it all clearly. I had been wicked in decieving my dear Familey 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 Familey will be on, you know. We'd better call him something else. Got any choice as to a name?"

"Carter" I said franticaly. "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 manacured 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 manacure scizzors, 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 poping 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--Xmas or no Xmas."

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 pavment. 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 inflexable 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 yeild 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 aparently wrong except that mother was very dignafied 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 naturaly 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 discription, 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 perambulaters. 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 discription I shall discribe 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 chandaliers 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 insignifacant, as usual. It is not considered good taste to have elaberate 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 Baloon, 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 Familey is that upset."

"Don't be a silly," I said. "And if the Familey is half as upset as I am, it is throwing a fit at this minute."

We were early, of course. My mother beleives 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'll 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 Stuard 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."