"Bab," she said, "if any man, no matter who, ever said those things to me, I"d go straight into his arms. I couldn"t help it. Whose going to act in it?"
"I think I"ll have Robert Edeson, or Richard Mansfield."
"Mansfield"s dead," said Jane.
"Honestly?"
"Honest he is. Why don"t you get some of these moveing picture actors?
They never have a chance in the Movies, only acting and not talking."
Well, that sounded logicle. And then I read her the place where the cruel first husband comes back and finds her married again and happy, and takes the Children out to drown them, only he can"t because they can swim, and they pull him in instead. The curtain goes down on nothing but a few bubbles rising to mark his watery Grave.
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."
I think Sis must have told Carter Brooks something about the trouble I was in, for he brought me a box of Candy one afternoon, and winked at me when mother was not looking.
"Don"t open it here," he whispered.
So I was forced to controll my impatience, though pa.s.sionately fond of Candy. And when I got to my room later, the box was full of cigarettes.
I could have screamed. It just gave me one more thing to hide, as if a man"s suit and shirt and so on was not suficient.
But Carter paid more attention to me than he ever had before, and at a tea dance sombody had at the Country Club he took me to one side and gave me a good talking to.
"You"re being rather a bad child, aren"t you?" he said.
"Certainly not."
"Well, not bad, but--er--naughty. Now see here, Bab, I"m fond of you, and you"re growing into a mightey pretty girl. But your whole Social Life is at stake. For heaven"s sake, at least until you"re married, cut out the cigarettes and booze."
That cut me to the heart, but what could I say?
Well, July came, and we had rented a house at Little Hampton and everywhere one went one fell over an open trunk or a barrell containing Silver or Linen.
Mother went around with her lips moving as if in prayer, but she was realy repeating lists, such as sowing basket, table candles, headache tablets, black silk stockings and tennis rackets.
Sis got some lovely Clothes, mostly imported, but they had a woman come in and sow for me. Hannah and she used to interupt my most precious Moments at my desk by running a tape measure around me, or pinning a paper pattern to me. The sowing woman always had her mouth full of Pins, and once, owing to my remarking that I wished I had been illagitimate, so I could go away and live my own life, she swallowed one. It caused a grate deal of excitement, with Hannah blaming me and giving her vinigar to swallow to soften the pin. Well, it turned out all right, for she kept on living, but she pretended to have sharp pains all over her here and there, and if the pin had been as lively as a tadpole and wriggled from spot to spot, it could not have hurt in so many Places.
Of course they blamed me, and I shut myself up more and more in my Sanctuery. There I lived with the creatures of my dreams, and forgot for a while that I was only a Sub-Deb, and that Leila"s last year"s tennis clothes were being fixed over for me.
But how true what dear Shakspeare says:
dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain.
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.
I loved my dreams, but alas, they were not enough. After a tortured hour or two at my desk, living in myself the agonies of my characters, suffering the pangs of the wife with two husbands and both living, struggling in the water with the children, fruit of the first union, dying with number two and blowing my last Bubbles heavenward--after all these emotions, I was done out.
Jane came in one day and found me prostrate on my couch, with a light of sufering in my eyes.
"Dearest!" cried Jane, and gliding to my side, fell on her knees.
"Jane!"
"What is it? You are ill?"
I could hardly more than whisper. In a low tone I said:
"He is dead."
"Dearest!"
"Drowned!"
At first she thought I meant a member of my Familey. But when she understood she looked serious.
"You are too intence, Bab," she said solemly. "You suffer too much. You are wearing yourself out."
"There is no other way," I replied in broken tones.
Jane went to the Mirror and looked at herself. Then she turned to me.
"Others don"t do it."
"I must work out my own Salvation, Jane," I observed firmly. But she had roused me from my apathy, and I went into Sis"s room, returning with a box of candy some one had sent her. "I must feel, Jane, or I cannot write."
"Pooh! Loads of writers get fat on it. Why don"t you try Comedy? It pays well."
"Oh--MONEY!" I said, in a disgusted tone.
"Your FORTE, of course, is Love," she said. "Probably that"s because you"ve had so much experience." Owing to certain reasons it is generaly supposed that I have experienced the gentle Pa.s.sion. But not so, alas!
"Bab," Jane said, suddenly, "I have been your friend for a long time. I have never betrayed you. You can trust me with your Life. Why don"t you tell me?"
"Tell you what?"
"Somthing has happened. I see it in your eyes. No girl who is happy and has not a tradgic story stays at home shut up at a messy desk when everyone is out at the Club playing tennis. Don"t talk to me about a Career. A girl"s Career is a man and nothing else. And especialy after last winter, Bab. Is--is it the same one?"
Here I made my fatal error. I should have said at once that there was no one, just as there had been no one last Winter. But she looked so intence, sitting there, and after all, why should I not have an amorus experience? I am not ugly, and can dance well, although inclined to lead because of dansing with other girls all winter at school. So I lay back on my pillow and stared at the ceiling.
"No. It is not the same man."
"What is he like? Bab, I"m so excited I can"t sit still."
"It--it hurts to talk about him," I observed faintly.