Bab: A Sub-Deb.
by Mary Roberts Rinehart.
CHAPTER I
THE SUB-DEB: A THEME WRITTEN AND SUBMITTED IN LITERATURE CLa.s.s BY BARBARA PUTNAM ARCHIBALD, 1917.
DEFINITION OF A THEME:
A theme is a piece of writing, either true or made up by the author, and consisting of Introduction, Body and Conclusion. It should contain Unity, Coherence, Emphasis, Perspecuity, Vivacity, and Presision. It may be ornamented with dialogue, discription and choice quotations.
SUBJECT OF THEME:
An interesting Incident of My Christmas Holadays.
Introduction:
"A tyrant"s power in rigor is exprest."--DRYDEN.
I HAVE decided to relate with Presision what occurred during my recent Christmas holaday. Although I was away from this school only four days, returning unexpectedly the day after Christmas, a number of Incidents occurred which I believe I should narate.
It is only just and fair that the Upper House, at least, should know of the injustice of my exile, and that it is all the result of Circ.u.mstances over which I had no controll.
For I make this apeal, and with good reason. Is it any fault of mine that my sister Leila is 20 months older than I am? Naturaly, no.
Is it fair also, I ask, that in the best society, a girl is a Sub-Deb the year before she comes out, and although mature in mind, and even maturer in many ways than her older sister, the latter is treated as a young lady, enjoying many privileges, while the former is treated as a mere child, in spite, as I have observed, of only 20 months difference?
I wish to place myself on record that it is NOT fair.
I shall go back, for a short time, to the way things were at home when I was small. I was very strictly raised. With the exception of Tommy Gray, who lives next door and only is about my age, I was never permitted to know any of the Other s.e.x.
Looking back, I am sure that the present way society is organized is really to blame for everything. I am being frank, and that is the way I feel. I was too strictly raised. I always had a Governess taging along.
Until I came here to school I had never walked to the corner of the next street unattended. If it wasn"t Mademoiselle it was mother"s maid, and if it wasn"t either of them, it was mother herself, telling me to hold my toes out and my shoulder blades in. As I have said, I never knew any of the Other s.e.x, except the miserable little beasts at dancing school.
I used to make faces at them when Mademoiselle was putting on my slippers and pulling out my hair bow. They were totaly uninteresting, and I used to put pins in my sash, so that they would get scratched.
Their pumps mostly squeaked, and n.o.body noticed it, although I have known my parents to dismiss a Butler who creaked at the table.
When I was sent away to school, I expected to learn something of life.
But I was disapointed. I do not desire to criticize this Inst.i.tution of Learning. It is an excellent one, as is shown by the fact that the best Families send their daughters here. But to learn life one must know something of both sides of it, Male and Female. It was, therefore, a matter of deep regret to me to find that, with the exception of the Dancing Master, who has three children, and the Gardner, there were no members of the sterner s.e.x to be seen.
The Athletic Coach was a girl! As she has left now to be married, I venture to say that she was not what Lord Chesterfield so uphoniously termed "SUAVITER IN MODO, FORTATER IN RE."
When we go out to walk we are taken to the country, and the three matinees a year we see in the city are mostly Shakspeare, aranged for the young. We are allowed only certain magazines, the Atlantic Monthly and one or two others, and Barbara Armstrong was penalized for having a framed photograph of her brother in running clothes.
At the school dances we are compeled to dance with each other, and the result is that when at home at Holaday parties I always try to lead, which annoys the boys I dance with.
Notwithstanding all this it is an excellent school. We learn a great deal, and our dear Principle is a most charming and erudite person. But we see very little of Life. And if school is a preparation for Life, where are we?
Being here alone since the day after Christmas, I have had time to think everything out. I am naturally a thinking person. And now I am no longer indignant. I realize that I was wrong, and that I am only paying the penalty that I deserve although I consider it most unfair to be given French translation to do. I do not object to going to bed at nine o"clock, although ten is the hour in the Upper House, because I have time then to look back over things, and to reflect, to think.
"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
SHAKSPEARE.
BODY OF THEME:
I now approach the narative of what happened during the first four days of my Christmas Holiday.
For a period before the fifteenth of December, I was rather worried. All the girls in the school were getting new clothes for Christmas parties, and their Families were sending on invitations in great numbers, to various festivaties that were to occur when they went home.
Nothing, however, had come for me, and I was worried. But on the 16th mother"s visiting Secretary sent on four that I was to accept, with tiped acceptances for me to copy and send. She also sent me the good news that I was to have two party dresses, and I was to send on my measurements for them.
One of the parties was a dinner and theater party, to be given by Carter Brooks on New Year"s Day. Carter Brooks is the well-known Yale Center, although now no longer such but selling advertizing, etcetera.
It is tradgic to think that, after having so long anticapated that party, I am now here in sackcloth and ashes, which is a figure of speech for the Peter Thompson uniform of the school, with plain white for evenings and no jewellry.
It was with anticapatory joy, therefore, that I sent the acceptances and the desired measurements, and sat down to cheerfully while away the time in studies and the various duties of school life, until the Holadays.
However, I was not long to rest in piece, for in a few days I received a letter from Carter Brooks, as follows:
DEAR BARBARA: It was sweet of you to write me so promptly, although I confess to being rather astonished as well as delighted at being called "Dearest." The signature too was charming, "Ever thine." But, dear child, won"t you write at once and tell me why the waist, bust and hip measurements? And the request to have them really low in the neck? Ever thine, CARTER.
It will be perceived that I had sent him the letter to mother, by mistake.
I was very unhappy about it. It was not an auspisious way to begin the Holadays, especially the low neck. Also I disliked very much having told him my waist measure which is large owing to Basket Ball.
As I have stated before, I have known very few of the Other s.e.x, but some of the girls had had more experience, and in the days before we went home, we talked a great deal about things. Especially Love. I felt that it was rather over-done, particularly in fiction. Also I felt and observed at divers times that I would never marry. It was my intention to go upon the stage, although modafied since by what I am about to relate.
The other girls say that I look like Julia Marlowe.
Some of the girls had boys who wrote to them, and one of them--I refrain from giving her name had--a Code. You read every third word. He called her "Couzin" and he would write like this:
Dear Couzin: I am well. Am just about crazy this week to go home. See notice enclosed you football game.
And so on and on. Only what it really said was "I am crazy to see you."
(In giving this Code I am betraying no secrets, as they have quarreled and everything is now over between them.)
As I had n.o.body, at that time, and as I had visions of a Career, I was a man-hater. I acknowledge that this was a pose. But after all, what is life but a pose?
"Stupid things!" I always said. "Nothing in their heads but football and tobacco smoke. Women," I said, "are only their playthings. And when they do grow up and get a little intellagence they use it in making money."
There has been a story in the school--I got it from one of the little girls--that I was disapointed in love in early youth, the object of my atachment having been the Tener in our Church choir at home. I daresay I should have denied the soft impeachment, but I did not. It was, although not appearing so at the time, my first downward step on the path that leads to destruction.
"The way of the Transgresser is hard"--Bible.
I come now to the momentous day of my return to my dear home for Christmas. Father and my sister Leila, who from now on I will term "Sis," met me at the station. Sis was very elegantly dressed, and she said: