"I am not going to interfere with your Allowence," she went on. "But I recall very distinctly that during Leila's first year she came home with three evening wraps and one nightgown, having to borrow from one of her schoolmates, while that was being washed. I feel that you should at least be warned."
How could I then state that instead of bying nightgowns, et cetera, I had been sending violets? I could not. If Life to my Familey was a matter of petticoats, and to me was a matter of fragrant flours, why cause them to suffer by pointing out the diference?
I did not feel superior. Only diferent.
That evening, while mother and Leila were out at a Festivaty, I gave father his neck-tie. He was overcome with joy and for a moment could not speak. Then he said:
"Good gracious, Bab! What a--what a DIFERENT necktie."
I explained my reasons for buying it for him, and also Tom Gray's objecting to it as to juvenile.
"Young impudense!" said father, refering to Tom. "I darsay I am quite an old fellow to him. Tie it for me, Bab."
"Though old of body, you are young in mentalaty," I said. But he only laughed, and then asked about the pin, which I wore over my heart.
"Where did you get that?" he asked in quite a feirce voice.
I told him, but not quite all. It was the first time I had concealed an AMOUR from my parents, having indeed had but few, and I felt wicked and clandestine. But, alas, it is the way of the heart to conceal its deepest feelings, save for blushes, which are beyond bodily control.
My father, however, mearly sighed and observed:
"So it has come at last!"
"What has come at last?" I asked, but feeling that he meant Love. For although forty-two and not what he once was, he still remembers his Youth.
But he refused to anser, and inquired politely if I felt to much grown-up, with the Allowence and so on, to be held on knees and occasionaly tickeled, as in other days.
Which I did not.
That night I stood at the window of my Chamber and gazed with a heaving heart at the Gray residense, which is next door. Often before I had gazed at its walls, and considered them but brick and morter, and needing paint. Now my emotions were diferent. I realized that a House is but a shell, covering and protecting its precious contents from weather and curious eyes, et cetera.
As I stood there, I percieved a light in an upper window, where the nursery had once been in which Tom--in those days when a child, Tommy--and I had played as children, he frequently pulling my hair and never thinking of what was to be. As I gazed, I saw a figure come to the window and gaze fixedly at me. IT WAS HE.
Hannah was in my room, making a list of six of everything which I needed, so I dared not call out. But we exchanged gestures of afection and trust across the void, and with a beating heart I retired to bed.
Before I slept, however, I put to myself this question, but found no anser to it. How can it be that two people of Diferent Sexes can know each other well, such as calling by first names and dancing together at dancing school, and going to the same dentist, and so on, and have no interest in each other except to have a partner at parties or make up a set at tennis? And then nothing happens, but there is a diference, and they are always hoping to meet on the street or elsewhere, and although quareling sometimes when together, are not happy when apart! How strange is Life!
Hannah staid in my room that evening, fussing about my not hanging up my garments when undressing. As she has lived with us for a long time, and used to take me for walks when Mademoiselle had the toothache, which was often, because she hated to walk, she knows most of the Familey affairs, and is sometimes a nusance.
So, while I said my prayers, she looked in my Check Book. I was furious, and snached it from her, but she had allready seen to much.
"Humph!" she said. "Well, all I've got to say is this, Miss Bab. You'll last just twenty days at the rate you are going, and will have to go stark naked all year."
At this indelacate speach I ordered her out of the room, but she only tucked the covers in and asked me if I had brushed my teeth.
"You know," she said, "that you'll be coming to me for money when you run out, Miss Bab, as you've always done, and expecting me to patch and mend and make over your old things, when I've got my hands full anyhow. And you with a Fortune fritered away."
"I wish to think, Hannah," I said in a plaintive tone. "Please go away."
But she came and stood over me.
"Now you're going to be a good girl this Summer and not give any trouble, aren't you?" she asked. "Because we're upset enough as it is, and your poor mother most distracted, without you're cutting loose as usual and driving everybody crazy."
I sat up in bed, forgetful that the window was now open for the night, and that I was visable from the Gray's in my ROBE DE NUIT.
"Whose distracted about what?" I asked.
But Hannah would say no more, and left me a pray to doubt and fear.
Alas, Hannah was right. There was something wrong in the house. Coming home as I had done, full of the joy of no rising bell or French grammar, or meat pie on Mondays from Sunday's roast, I had noticed nothing.
I fear I am one who lives for the Day only, and as such I beleive that when people smile they are happy, forgetfull that to often a smile conceals an aching and tempestuous Void within.
Now I was to learn that the demon Strife had entered my domacile, there to make his--or her--home. I do not agree with that poet, A. J. Ryan, date forgoten, who observed:
Better a day of strife Than a Century of sleep.
Although naturaly no one wishes to sleep for a Century, or even approxamately.
There was Strife in the house. The first way I noticed it, aside from Hannah's anonamous remark, was by observing that Leila was mopeing. She acted very strangely, giving me a pair of pink hoze without more than a hint on my part, and not sending me out of the room when Carter Brooks came in to tea the next day.
I had staid at home, fearing that if I went out I should purchace some CREPE DE CHENE combinations I had been craving in a window, and besides thinking it possable that Tom would drop in to renew our relations of yesterday, not remembering that there was a Ball Game.
Mother having gone out to the Country Club, I put my hair on top of my head, thus looking as adult as possable. Taking a new detective story of Jane's under my arm, I descended the staircase to the library.
Sis was there, curled up in a chair, knitting for the soldiers. Having forgoten the Ball Game, as I have stated, I asked her, in case I had a caller, to go away, which, considering she has the house to herself all winter, I considered not to much.
"A caller!" she said. "Since when have you been allowed to have callers?"
I looked at her steadily.
"I am young," I observed, "and still in the school room, Leila. I admit it, so don't argue. But as I have not taken the veil, and as this is not a Penitentary, I darsav I can see my friends now and anon, especialy when they live next door."
"Oh!" she said. "It's the Gray infant, is it!"
This remark being purely spiteful, I ignored it and sat down to my book, which concerned the stealing of some famous Emerelds, the heroine being a girl detective who could shoot the cork out of a bottle at a great distance, and whose name was Barbara!
It was for that reason Jane had loaned me the book.
I had reached the place where the Duchess wore the Emerelds to a ball, above white satin and lillies, the girl detective being dressed as a man and driving her there, because the Duchess had been warned and hautily refused to wear the paste copies she had--when Sis said, peavishly:
"Why don't you knit or do somthing useful, Bab?"
I do not mind being picked on by my parents or teachers, knowing it is for my own good. But I draw the line at Leila. So I replied:
"Knit! If that's the scarf you were on at Christmas, and it looks like it, because there's the crooked place you wouldn't fix, let me tell you that since then I have made three socks, heals and all, and
they are probably now on the feet of the Allies."
"Three!" she said. "Why THREE?"
"I had no more wool, and there are plenty of one-leged men anyhow."
I would fane have returned to my book, dreaming between lines, as it were, of the Romanse which had come into my life the day before. It is, I have learned, much more interesting to read a book when one has, or is, experiencing the Tender Passion at the time. For during the love seens one can then fancy that the impasioned speaches are being made to oneself, by the object of one's afection. In short, one becomes, even if but a time, the Heroine.
But I was to have no privacy.
"Bab," Sis said, in a more mild and fraternal tone, "I want you to do somthing for me."
"Why don't you go and get it yourself?" I said. "Or ring for George?"
"I don't want you to get anything. I want you to go to father and mother for somthing."
"I'd stand a fine chance to get it!" I said. "Unless it's Calomel or advice."
Although not suspicous by nature, I now looked at her and saw why I had recieved the pink hoze. It was not kindness. It was bribery!
"It's this," she explained. "The house we had last year at the seashore is emty and we can have it. But mother won't go. She--well, she won't go. They're going to open the country house and stay there."
A few days previously this would have been sad news for me, owing to not being allowed to go to the Country Club except in the mornings, and no chance to meet any new people, and no bathing save in the usual tub. But now I thriled at the information, because the Grays have a place near the Club also.
For a moment I closed my eyes and saw myself, all in white and decked with flours, wandering through the meadows and on the links with a certain Person whose name I need not write, having allready related my feelings toward him.
I am older now by some weeks, older and sader and wiser. For Tradgedy has crept into my life, so that somtimes I wonder if it is worth while to live on and suffer, especialy without an Allowence, and being again obliged to suplicate for the smallest things.
But I am being brave. And, as Carter Brooks wrote me in a recent letter, acompanying a box of candy:
"After all, Bab, you did your durndest. And if they do not understand, I do, and I'm proud of you. As for being `blited,' as per your note to me, remember that I am, also. Why not be blited together?"
This latter, of course, is not serious, as he is eight years older than I, and even fills in at middle-aged Dinners, being handsome and dressing well, although poor.
Sis's remarks were interupted by the clamor of the door bell. I placed a shaking hand over the Frat pin, beneath which my heart was beating only for HIM. And waited.
What was my dispair to find it but Carter Brooks!
Now there had been a time when to have Carter Brooks sit beside me, as now, and treat me as fully out in Society, would have thriled me to the core. But that day had gone. I realized that he was not only to old, but to flirtatous. He was one who would not look on a woman's Love as precious, but as a plaything.
"Barbara," he said to me. "I do not beleive that Sister is glad to see me."
"I don't have to look at you," Sis said, "I can knit."
"Tell me, Barbara," he said to me beseachingly, "am I as hard to look at as all that?"
"I rather like looking at you," I rejoined with cander. "Across the room."
He said we were not as agreable as we might be, so he picked up a magazine and looked at the Automobile advertizments.
"I can't aford a car," he said. "Don't listen to me, either of you. I'm only talking to myself. But I like to read the ads. Hello, here's a snappy one for five hundred and fifty. Let me see. If I gave up a couple of Clubs, and smokeing, and flours to DEBUTANTES--except Barbara, because I intend to buy every pozy in town when she comes out--I might----"
"Carter," I said, "will you let me see that ad?"
Now the reason I had asked for it was this: in the book the Girl Detective had a small but powerful car, and she could do anything with it, even going up the Court House steps once in it and interupting a trial at the criticle moment.
But I did not, at that time, expect to more than wish for such a vehical. How pleasant, my heart said, to have a car holding to, and since there was to be no bathing, et cetera, and I was not allowed a horse in the country, except my old pony and the basket faeton, to ramble through the lanes with a choice Spirit, and talk about ourselves mostly, with a sprinkling of other subjects!
Five hundred and fifty from nine hundred and forty-five leaves three hundred and forty-five. But I need few garments at school, wearing mostly unaforms of blue serge with one party frock for Friday nights and receptions to Lecturers and Members of the Board. And besides, to own a machine would mean less carfare and no shoes to speak of, because of not walking.
Jane Raleigh came in about then and I took her upstairs and closed the door.
"Jane," I said, "I want your advise. And be honest, because it's a serious matter."
"If it's Tommy Gray," she said, in a contemptable manner, "don't."
How could I know, as revealed later, that Jane had gone on a Diet since yesterday, owing to a certain remark, and had had nothing but an apple all day? I could not. I therfore stared at her steadily and observed:
"I shall never ask for advise in matters of the Heart. There I draw the line."
However, she had seen some caromels on my table, and suddenly burst into emotion. I was worried, not knowing the trouble and fearing that Jane was in love with Tom. It was a terrable thought, for which should I do? Hold on to him and let her suffer, or remember our long years of intimacy and give him up to her?
Should I or should I not remove his Frat pin?
However, I was not called upon to renunciate anything. In the midst of my dispair Jane asked for a Sandwitch and thus releived my mind. I got her some cake and a bottle of cream from the pantrey and she became more normle. She swore she had never cared for Tom, he being not her style, as she had never loved any one who had not black eyes.
"Nothing else matters, Bab," she said, holding out the Sandwitch in a dramatic way. "I see but his eyes. If they are black, they go through me like a knife."
"Blue eyes are true eyes," I observed.
"There is somthing feirce about black eyes," she said, finishing the cream. "I feel this way. One cannot tell what black eyes are thinking. They are a mystery, and as such they atract me. Almost all murderers have black eyes."
"Jane!" I exclaimed.
"They mean passion," she muzed. "They are STRONG eyes. Did you ever see a black-eyed man with glasses? Never. Bab, are you engaged to Tom?"
"Practicaly."
I saw that she wished details, but I am not that sort. I am not the kind to repeat what has been said to me in the emotion of Love. I am one to bury sentament deep in my heart, and have therfore the reputation of being cold and indiferent. But better that than having the Male Sex afraid to tell me how I effect them for fear of it being repeated to other girls, as some do.
"Of course it cannot be soon, if at all," I said. "He has three more years of College, and as you know, here they regard me as a child."
"You have your own income."
That reminded me of the reason for my having sought the privasy of my Chamber. I said:
"Jane, I am thinking of buying an automobile. Not a Limousine, but somthing styleish and fast. I must have Speed, if nothing else."
She stopped eating a caromel and gave me a stunned look.
"What for?"
"For emergencies."
"Then they disaprove of him?" she said, in a low, tence voice.
"They know but little, although what they suspect--Jane," I said, my bitterness bursting out, "what am I now? Nothing. A prisoner, or the equivalent of such, forbiden everything because I am to young! My Soul hampered by being taken to the country where there is nothing to do, given a pony cart, although but 2O months younger than Leila, and not going to come out until she is married,
or permanently engaged."
"It IS hard," said Jane. "Heart-breaking, Bab."
We sat, in deep and speachless gloom. At last Jane said:
"Has she anyone in sight?"
"How do I know? They keep me away at School all year. I am but a stranger here, although I try hard to be otherwise."
"Because we might help along, if there is anyone. To get her married is your only hope, Bab. They're afraid of you. That's all. You're the tipe to atract Men, except your noze, and you could help that by pulling it. My couzin did that, only she did it to much, and made it pointed."
I looked in my mirror and sighed. I have always desired an aristocratic noze, but a noze cannot be altered like teeth, unless broken and then generaly not improved.
"I have tried a shell hair pin at night, but it falls off when I go to sleep," I said, in a despondant manner.
We sat for some time, eating caromels and thinking about Leila, because there was nothing to do with my noze, but Leila was diferent.
"Although," Jane said, "you will never be able to live your own Life until she is gone, Bab."
"There is Carter Brooks," I suggested. "But he is poor. And anyhow she is not in Love with him."
"Leila is not one to care about Love," said Jane. "That makes it eazier."
"But whom?" I said. "Whom, Jane?"
We thought and thought, but of course it was hard, for we knew none of those who filled my sister's life, or sent her flours and so on.
At last I said:
"There must be a way, Jane. THERE MUST BE. And if not, I shall make one. For I am desparate. The mere thought of going back to school, when I am as old as at present and engaged also, is madening."
But Jane held out a warning hand.
"Go slow, dearie," she said, in a solemn tone. "Do nothing rash. Remember this, that she is your sister, and should be hapily married if at all. Also she needs one with a strong hand to control her. And such are not easy to find. You must not ruin her Life."
Considering the fatal truth of that, is it any wonder that, on contemplateing the events that folowed, I am ready to cry, with the great poet Hood: 1835-1874: whose numerous works we studied during the spring term:
The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart Page 166
