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 Shakspeare, 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?) full-pannoplied 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 emphacis 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 aplication."
"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 speach 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 mendasity. It was Despair.
Mother actually went white. She cluched 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 portentious 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 wreched 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 naturaly truthful, and Deception is hateful to me. But when my sister uttered the above dispariging remark I saw that, to preserve my own dignaty, 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 terrafied. The family Kitten, to speak in allegory, had become a Lion and showed its clause.
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 agatated 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 smouldering 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--especialy a jealous one with the aformentioned 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 actualy 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 releive 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 naturaly 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 Valen
tine, 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 eventualy.
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 delibarating things over, I felt that Violets, alone and unsuported, 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. Unluckaly, 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 vibrater 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 beleif 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 drivelling young Fool. I'm not blind, or an idot. 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 sickley sentamentality. 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 phrazed 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 vapour 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 modafied Empire, with little bunches of roses here and there on it, and when she and the dressmaker were hagling over the roses, I took the scizzors and cut the neck of the lining two inches lower in front. The effect was posatively impressive. The other was blue over orkid, 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 2O 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 Methuzala. 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's 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 Xmas 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 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.
<
br /> "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.
The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart Page 152
