Bab: A Sub-Deb | Page 8

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?"
"You think you are in love with some drivelling young Fool. I'm not blind, or an idot. And I won't have it."
"I have not said that there is anyone, have I?" I said in a gentle voice. "But if there was, just what would you propose to do, mother?"
"If you were three years younger I'd propose to spank you." Then I think she saw that she was taking the wrong method, for she changed her Tactics. "It's the fault of that Silly School," she said. (Note: These are my mother's words, not mine.) "They are hotbeds of sickley sentamentality. They----"
And just then the violets came, addressed to me. Mother opened them herself, her mouth set. "My love is like a white, white rose," she said. "Barbara, do you know who sent these?"
"Yes, mother," I said meekly. This was quite true. I did.
I am indeed sorry to record that here my mother lost her temper, and there was no end of a fuss. It ended by mother offering me a string of seed pearls for Christmas, and my party dresses cut V front and back, if I would, as she phrazed it, "put him out of my silly head."
"I shall have to write one letter, mother," I said, "to--to break things off. I cannot tear myself out of another's Life without a word."
She sniffed.
"Very well," she said. "One letter. I trust you to make it only one."
I come now to the next day. How true it is, that "Man's life is but a jest, a dream, a shadow, bubble, air, a vapour at the best!"
I spent the morning with mother at the dressmakers and she chose two perfectly spiffing things, one of white chiffon over silk, made modafied Empire, with little bunches of roses here and there on it, and when she and the dressmaker were hagling over the roses, I took the scizzors and cut the neck of the lining two inches lower in front. The effect was posatively impressive. The other was blue over orkid, a perfectly passionate combination.
When we got home some of the girls had dropped in, and Carter Brooks and Sis were having tea in the den. I am perfectly sure that Sis threw a cigarette in the fire when I went in. When I think of my sitting here alone, when I have done NOTHING, and Sis playing around and smoking cigarettes, and nothing said, all for a difference of 2O months, it makes me furious.
"Let's go in and play with the children, Leila," he said. "I'm feeling young today."
Which was perfectly silly. He is not Methuzala. Although thinking himself so, or almost.
Well, they went into the drawing room. Elaine Adams was there waiting for me, and Betty Anderson and Jane Raleigh. And I hadn't been in the room five minutes before I knew that they all knew. It turned out later that Hannah was engaged to the Adams's butler, and she had told him, and he had told Elaine's governess, who is still there and does the ordering, and Elaine sends her stockings home for her to darn.
Sis had told Carter, too, I saw that, and among them they had rather a good time. Carter sat down at the piano and struck a few chords, chanting "My Love is like a white, white rose."
"Only you know" he said, turning to me, "that's wrong. It ought to be a `red, red rose.'"
"Certainly not. The word is `white.'"
"Oh, is it?" he said, with his head on one side. "Strange that both you and Harold should have got it wrong."
I confess to a feeling of uneasiness at that moment.
Tea came, and