Bab a Sub-Deb Part 2

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 Pa.s.sionate 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 Valentine, 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 m.u.f.f 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-sh.e.l.l."

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?"