Bab a Sub-Deb Part 16

Now I intended to let it go at that, and should have, had not Jane kept on asking Questions. Because I had had a good lesson the winter before, and did not intend to decieve again. And this I will say--I realy told Jane Raleigh nothing. She jumped to her own conclusions. And as for her people saying she cannot chum with me any more, I will only say this: If Jane Raleigh smokes she did not learn it from me.

Well, I had gone as far as I meant to. I was not realy in love with anyone, although I liked Carter Brooks, and would posibly have loved him with all the depth of my Nature if Sis had not kept an eye on me most of the time. However----

Jane seemed to be expecting somthing, and I tried to think of some way to satisfy her and not make any trouble. And then I thought of the Suitcase. So I locked the door and made her promise not to tell, and got the whole thing out of the Toy Closet.

"Wha--what is it?" asked Jane.

I said nothing, but opened it all up. The Flask was gone, but the rest was there, and Carter's box too. Jane leaned down and lifted the trowsers and poked around somewhat. Then she straitened and said:

"You have run away and got married, Bab."

"Jane!"

She looked at me peircingly.

"Don't lie to me," she said accusingly. "Or else what are you doing with a man's whole Outfit, including his dirty coller? Bab, I just can't bare it."

Well, I saw that I had gone to far, and was about to tell Jane the truth when I heard the sowing Woman in the hall. I had all I could do to get the things put away, and with Jane looking like death I had to stand there and be fitted for one of Sis's chiffon frocks, with the low neck filled in with net.

"You must remember, Miss Bab," said the human Pin cushon, "that you are still a very young girl, and not out yet."

Jane got up off the bed suddenly.

"I--I guess I'll go, Bab," she said. "I don't feel very well."

As she went out she stopped in the Doorway and crossed her Heart, meaning that she would die before she would tell anything. But I was not comfortable. It is not a pleasant thought that your best friend considers you married and gone beyond recall, when in truth you are not, or even thinking about it, except in idle moments.

The seen now changes. Life is nothing but such changes. No sooner do we alight on one Branch, and begin to sip the honey from it, but we are taken up and carried elsewhere, perhaps to the Mountains or to the Sea-sh.o.r.e, and there left to make new friends and find new methods of Enjoyment.

The flight--or journey--was in itself an anxious time. For on my otherwise clear conscience rested the weight of that strange Suitcase.

Fortunately Hannah was so busy that I was left to pack my belongings myself, and thus for a time my gilty secret was safe. I put my things in on top of the masculine articles, not daring to leave any of them in the closet, owing to house-cleaning, which is always done before our return in the fall.

On the train I had a very unpleasant experience, due to Sis opening my Suitcase to look for a magazine, and drawing out a soiled gentleman's coller. She gave me a very peircing Glance, but said nothing and at the next opportunity I threw it out of a window, concealed in a newspaper.

We now approach the Catastrofe. My book on playwriting divides plays into Introduction, Development, Crisis, Denouement and Catastrofe. And so one may devide life. In my case the Cinder proved the Introduction, as there was none other. I consider that the Suitcase was the Development, my showing it to Jane Raleigh was the Crisis, and the Denouement or Catastrofe occured later on.

Let us then procede to the Catastrofe.

Jane Raleigh came to see me off at the train. Her Familey was coming the next day. And instead of Flowers, she put a small bundel into my hands.

"Keep it hiden, Bab," she said, "and tear up the card."

I looked when I got a chance, and she had crocheted me a wash cloth, with a pink edge. "For your linen Chest," the card said, "and I'm doing a bath towle to match."

I tore up the Card, but I put the wash cloth with the other things I was trying to hide, because it is bad luck to throw a Gift away. But I hoped, as I seemed to be getting more things to conceal all the time, that she would make me a small bath towle, and not the sort as big as a bed spread.

Father went with us to get us settled, and we had a long talk while mother and Sis made out lists for Dinners and so forth.

"Look here, Bab," he said, "somthing's wrong with you. I seem to have lost my only boy, and have got instead a sort of tear-y young person I don't recognize."

"I'm growing up, father" I said. I did not mean to rebuke him, but ye G.o.ds! Was I the only one to see that I was no longer a Child?

"Somtimes I think you are not very happy with us."

"Happy?" I pondered. "Well, after all, what is happiness?"

He took a spell of coughing then, and when it was over he put his arms around me and was quite afectionate.

"What a queer little rat it is!" he said.

I only repeat this to show how even my father, with all his afection and good qualities, did not understand and never would understand. My Heart was full of a longing to be understood. I wanted to tell him my yearnings for better things, my aspirations to make my life a great and glorious thing. AND HE DID NOT UNDERSTAND.

He gave me five dollars instead. Think of the Tradgedy of it!

As we went along, and he pulled my ear and finaly went asleep with a hand on my shoulder, the bareness of my Life came to me. I shook with sobs. And outside somewhere Sis and mother made Dinner lists. Then and there I made up my mind to work hard and acheive, to become great and powerful, to write things that would ring the Hearts of men--and women, to, of course--and to come back to them some day, famous and beautiful, and when they sued for my love, to be kind and hauty, but cold. I felt that I would always be cold, although gracious.

I decided then to be a writer of plays first, and then later on to act in them. I would thus be able to say what came into my head, as it was my own play. Also to arrange the seens so as to wear a variety of gowns, including evening things. I spent the rest of the afternoon manacuring my nails in our state room.

Well, we got there at last. It was a large house, but everything was to thin about it. The School will understand this, the same being the condition of the new Freshman dormitory. The walls were to thin, and so were the floors. The Doors s.h.i.+vered in the wind, and palpatated if you slamed them. Also you could hear every Sound everywhere.

I looked around me in dispair. Where, oh where, was I to find my cherished solatude? Where?

On account of Hannah hating a new place, and considering the house an insult to the Servants, especialy only one bathroom for the lot of them, she let me unpack alone, and so far I was safe. But where was I to work?

Fate settled that for me however.

There is no armour against fate; Death lays his icy hand on Kings.

J. s.h.i.+rley; Dirge.

Previously, however, mother and I had had a talk. She sailed into my room one evening, dressed for dinner, and found me in my ROBE DE NUIT, curled up in the window seat admiring the view of the ocean.

"Well!" she said. "Is this the way you intend going to dinner?"

"I do not care for any dinner," I replied. Then, seeing she did not understand, I said coldly. "How can I care for food, mother, when the Sea looks like a dying ople?"

"Dying p.u.s.s.ycat!" mother said, in a very nasty way. "I don't know what has come over you, Barbara. You used to be a normle Child, and there was some accounting for what you were going to do. But now! Take off that nightgown, and I'll have Tanney hold off dinner for half an hour."

Tanney was the butler who had taken Patrick's place.

"If you insist," I said coldly. "But I shall not eat."

"Why not?"

"You wouldn't understand, mother."

"Oh, I wouldn't? Well, suppose I try," she said, and sat down. "I am not very intellagent, but if you put it clearly I may grasp it. Perhaps you'd better speak slowly, also."

So, sitting there in my room, while the sea throbed in tireless beats against the sh.o.r.e, while the light faded and the stars issued, one by one, like a rash on the Face of the sky, I told mother of my dreams. I intended, I said, to write Life as it realy is, and not as supposed to be.