Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ Jane said, “that if you don’t take it some one will, and you will have to get one that costs more.”
True indeed, I reflected, with my Check Book in my hand.
Ah, would that some power had whispered in my ear “No. By purchacing the above car you are endangering that which lies near to your Heart and Mind. Be warned in time.”
But no sign came. No warning hand was outstretched to put my Check Book back in my pocket book. I wrote the Check and sealed my doom.
How weak is human nature! ”

“ Jane had told him he could come, as the Familey would be out.
The thought of the coming seperation, although but for four days, caused me deep greif. Although engaged for only a short time, already I felt how it feels to know that in the vicinaty is some one dearer than Life itself. I felt I must speak to some one, so I observed to Hannah that I was most unhappy, but not to ask me why. I was dressing at the time, and she was hooking me up.
“Unhappy!” she said, “with a thousand dollars a year, and naturaly curly hair! You ought to be ashamed, Miss Bab.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jane was crying.
“It is too touching for words, Bab!” she said. “It has broken my heart. I can just close my eyes and see the Theater dark, and the stage almost dark, and just those bubbles coming up and breaking. Would you have to have a tank?”
“I darsay,” I replied dreamily. “Let the other people worry about that. I can only give them the material, and hope that they have intellagence enough to grasp it.” ”

“ 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 looked at him in a steady manner.
“When you have put on the Unaform of your Country,” I said, “or at least of Plattsburg, I shall tell you my Milatary secrets, and not before.”
“Plattsburg!” he exclaimed. “What do you know of Plattsburg?”
I then told him, and he listened, but in a very disagreeable way. And at last he said:
“The plain truth, Bab, is that some good-looking chap has filled you up with a lot of dope which is meant for men, not romantic girls. I’ll bet to cents that if a fellow with a broken noze or a squint had told you, you’d have forgotten it the next minute.” ”

“ I am not one to cry over spilt milk. But I am one to confess when I have made a mistake. I do not beleive in laying the blame on Providence when it belongs to the Other Sex, either.
It was on going down to the shed one morning and finding a lamp gone and another tire hanging in tatters that I learned the Truth. He who should have guarded my interests with his very Life, including finances, had been taking the Arab out in the evenings when I was confined to the bosom of my Familey, and using up gasoline et cetera besides riding with whom I knew not. ”

“ Mademoiselle sent for me and objected, saying that it was not a theme for a young girl, and that I must write a new one, on the subject of pears. How is one to develope in this atmosphere?
Some of the girls are coming back. They stragle in, and put the favers they got at Cotillions on the dresser, and their holaday gifts, and each one relates some amorus experience while at home. Dear dairy, is there somthing wrong with me, that Love has passed me by? I have had offers of Devotion but none that apealed to me, being mostly either to young or not atracting me by physicle charm. ”

“ It wouldn’t be honest, would it?”
“Barbara!” she said in a terrable tone. “First disobedience, and now sarcasm. If your father was only here! I feel so alone and helpless.”
Her tone cut me to the Heart. After all she was my own mother, or at least maintained so, in spite of numerous questions enjendered by our lack of resemblence, moral as well as physicle. But I did not offer to embrase her, as she was at that moment poring out her tea. ”

“ So he apologised, and came and sat beside me, without being a nusance, and asked me what my other troubles were.
“Carter,” I said, in a grave voice, “I know that you beleive me young and incapable of Afection. But you are wrong. I am of a most loving disposition.”
“Now see here, Bab,” he said. “Be fair. If I am not to hold your hand, or—or be what you call a nusance, don’t talk like this. I am but human,” he said, “and there is somthing about you lately that—well, go on with your story. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ It is easy work, although sleeping on a cot is not always comfortible. But at least a trained nurse leads her own Life and is not bully-ed by her Familey. And more, she does good constantly.
I feel tonight that I should like to do good, and help the sick, and perhaps go to the Front. I know a lot of college men in the American Ambulence.
I shall never go on the stage, dear Dairy. I know now its decietfullness and visisitudes. My heart has bled until it can bleed no more, as a result of a theatricle Adonis. I am through with the theater forever. ”

“ It was all perfectly thrilling. And then we drew up in front of the house and he helped me out, and my entire Familey had just got out of the motor and was lined up on the pavment staring at us!
“All right, are you?” he said, as coolly as if they had not been anywhere in sight. “Well, good night and good luck!” And he got into the taxicab and drove away, leaving me in the hands of the Enemy.
The next morning I was sent back to school. They never gave me a chance to explain, for mother went into hysterics, after accusing me of having men dangling around waiting at every corner. ”

“ I’d rather not arrest you, if we can find a way out. You look so young, so new to Crime! Even your excuse for being here is so naïve, that I—won’t you tell me why you wrote a love letter, if you are not in love? ”

“ I cried, stupafied. “How can you think of Social pleasures when the enemy is at our gates?”
“Oh nonsense, Barbara,” she replied in a cold tone. “We intend to do our part, of course. But what has that to do with a small Luncheon?”
“I do not feel like festivaty,” I said. “And I shall be very busy this holaday, because although young there are some things I can do.”
Now I have always loved my mother, although feeling sometimes that she had forgoten about having been a girl herself once, and also not being much given to Familey embrases because of her hair being marceled and so on. ”

“ I am one who beleives in doing things, even though necesarily small. What if I can be but one of the little drops of Water or little grains of Sand? I am ready to rise like a lioness to my country’s call and would, if permitted and not considered imodest by my Familey, put on the clothing of the Other Sex and go into the trenches. ”

“ 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. ”

“ My very soul is sick, oh Dairy. How can I face the truth? How write it out for my eyes to see? But I must. For something must be done. The play is failing.
The way I discovered it was this. Yesterday, being short of money, I sold my amethist pin to Jane, one of the housemaids, for two dollars, throwing in a lace coller when she seemed doubtful, as I had a special purpose for useing funds. ”

“ The hours flew on joyous feet. When Adrian came to the footlights and looking aparently square at me, declaimed: “The World owes me a living. I will have it,” I almost swooned. His clothes were worn. He looked hungry and ghaunt. But how true that
“Rags are royal raimant, when worn for virtue’s sake.” ”

“ I said. “It is not what is outside of us that matters. It is what is inside. It is what we are, not what we eat, or look like, or wear. I have given up everything, Hannah, to my Career.”
“You’re young yet,” said Hannah. “You used to be fond enough of the Boys.”
Hannah has been with us for years, so she gets rather talkey at times, and has to be sat upon.
“I care nothing whatever for the Other Sex,” I replied hautily.
She was opening my suitcase at the time, and I was surveying the chamber which was to be the seen of my Literary Life, at least for some time. ”

“ Who, in the Familey, has my noze?
It is all well enough for Hannah to observe that I was a pretty baby with fat cheaks. May not Hannah herself, for some hiden reason, have brought me here, taking away the real I to perhaps languish unseen and “waste my sweetness on the dessert air”? But that way lies madness. Life must be made the best of as it is, and not as it might be or indeed ought to be.{180}
Father promised before he left that I was not to be scolded, as I felt far from well, and was drinking water about every minute. ”

“ I do not wish to be considered as thinking only of Wealth. Indeed, I have always considered that where my heart was in question I would always decide for Love and penury rather than a Castle and{213} greed. In this I differ from my sister Leila, who says that under no circumstanses would she ever inspect a refrigerater to see if the cook was wasting anything.
I was not worried about the violets, as I consider Money spent as but water over a damn, and no use worrying about. But I was no longer hungry, and I observed this to Jane. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Alas, war has already made changes in my Familey. George, the butler, has felt the call of Duty and has enlisted, and we now have a William who chips the best china, and looks like a German although he says not, and willing to put out the National Emblem every morning from a window in father’s dressing room. Which if he is a Spy he would probably not do, or at least without being compeled to. ”

“ BAB’S BURGLAR I “MONEY is the root of all Evil.”
I do not know who said the above famous words, but they are true. I know it but to well. For had I never gone on an Allowence, and been in debt and always worried about the way silk stockings wear out, et cetera, I would be having a much better time. For who can realy enjoy a dress when it is not paid for or only partialy so? ”

“ How can the Grave be its goal? There must be something beyond. I have thought it all out, and I beleive in a world beyond, but not in a hell. Hell, I beleive, is the state of mind one gets into in this world as a result of one’s wicked Acts or one’s wicked Thoughts, and is in one’s self. ”

“ So I told him that Adrian was a mill worker, and the villain makes him lose his position, by means of forjery. And Adrian goes to jail, and comes out, and no one will give him work. So he prepares to blow up a Milionaire’s house, and his sweetheart is in it. He has been to the Milionaire for work and been refused and thrown out, saying, just before the butler and three footmen push him through a window, in dramatic tones, “The world owes me a living and I will have it.”
“Socialism!” said Carter. “Hard stuff to handle for the two dollar seats. The world owes him a living. ”

“ In the mornings I took lessons driving the car, which I called the Arab, from the well-known song, which we have on the phonograph;
From the Dessert I come to thee,
On my Arab shod with fire.
The instructer had not heard the song, but he said it was a good name, because very likly no one else would think of having it.
“It sounds like a love song,” he observed.
“It is,” I replied, and gave him a steady glanse. Because, if one realy loves, it is silly to deny it. ”

“ I have long desired a Career for myself, anyhow. I have a good mind, and learn easily, and I am not a Paracite. The idea of being such has always been repugnent to me, while the idea of a few dollars at a time doaled out to one of independant mind is galling. And how is one to remember what one has done with{163} one’s Allowence, when it is mostly eaten up by Small Lones, Carfare, Stamps, Church Collection, Rose Water and Glicerine, and other Mild Cosmetics, and the aditional Food necesary when one is still growing? ”

“ And father said:
“Bab, you’re not eating. Is it possable that that boarding school hollow of yours is filling up?”
One’s Familey is apt to translate one’s finest Emotions into terms of food and drink. Yet could I say that it was my Heart and not my Stomache that was full? I could not.
During dinner I looked at Leila and wondered how she could be married off. For until so I would continue to be but a Child, and not allowed to be engaged or anything. I thought if she would eat some starches it would help, she being pretty but thin. ”

“ Before the sun was up, or more than starting, I had climbed to my casement by means of a wire trellis, and put on my robe de nuit.{142} But before I settled to sleep I went to the pantrey and there satisfied the pangs of nothing since Breakfast the day before. All the lights seemed to be on, on the lower floor, which I considered wastful of Tanney, the butler. But being sleepy, gave it no further thought. And so to bed, as the great English dairy-keeper, Pepys, had said in his dairy.
It seemed but a few moments later that I heard a scream, and opening my eyes, saw Leila in the doorway. ”

“ Everyone knows that a Débutante only has one year nowadays, and if she doesn’t go off in that year she’s swept away by the flood of new Girls the next fall. We might as well be frank. And while Barbara’s not a beauty, as soon as the bones in her neck get a little flesh on them she won’t be hopeless, and she has a flipant manner that Men like.”
“I intend to keep Barbara under my eyes this summer,” mother said firmly. “After last Xmas’s happenings, and our Discovery today, I shall keep her with me. She need not, however, interfere with you, Leila. ”