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 terrably 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 Baloon, 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 boullion and creamed chicken and baked ham and sandwitches, 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 tradgedy. For if it is not a tradgedy 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 perambulater. It was sickning.
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 Xmas favors--and was fumbling about for it.
"You are tired and unerved 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 atention 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 goingson. You're only a little girl, with all your high and mightiness, and there's going to be no scandal in this Familey 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 changable 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 fataly--"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 ilumination 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 Xmas. I got a lot of things, including the necklace, and a mending basket from Sis, with the hope that it would make me tidey, and father had bought me a set of Silver Fox, which mother did not approve of, it being too expencive 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 terrable. 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 poin--(Memo: Not in the Dictionery and I cannot spell it, although not usualy troubled as to spelling.)
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 proceded to open it.
My heart skipped two beats, and then hamered. 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 terrable voice. "To Barbara, from H----"
"Mother----" I began, in an ernest tone.
"A child of mine recieving such a book from a man!" she went on. "Barbara, I am speachless."
But she was not speachless. If she was speachless 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 tablet
s, 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 beleive 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 catalogue. "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 terrable. It rained solid sheets, and Patrick, the butler, gave notice three hours after he had recieved his Xmas 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 jamed, 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 sickley 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 surprize 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 sensative. You've got to remember how sensative 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 to, 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 rotateing waistcoat. But I was desparate.
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 handkercheif 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 Familey 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, especialy as my face was very sad and tradgic.
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 beleive my ears.
He approached me with a smileing face.
"Well, Bab," he said, exactly as if nothing had happened, "have you had a nice day?"
He had the eyes of a bacilisk, that creature of Fable.
"I've had a lovely day, Father," I replied. I could be bacilisk-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 heighth." 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 sentament.
"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 equivelent for it, and you look like a figure of Tradgedy!"
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 hour
s 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 retreived." 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 respectible looking men went up and examined it, and one even measured it with a Tape-measure.
She had materialised 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 Familey 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 agreably 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 Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart Page 154
