We have been requested to write, during this vacation, a true and veracious account of a meeting with any celebrity we happened to meet during the summer. If no celebrity, any interesting character would do, excepting one's own family.
But as one's own family is neither celebrated nor interesting, there is no temptation to write about it.
As I met Mr. Reginald Beecher this summer, I have chosen him as my subject.
Brief history of the Subject: He was born in 1890 at Woodbury, N. J. Attended public high schools, and in 1910 graduated from Princeton University.
Following year produced first Play in New York, called Her Soul. Followed this by the Soul Mate, and this by The Divorce.
Description of Subject. Mr. Beecher is tall and slender, and wears a very small dark Mustache. Although but twenty-six years of age, his hair on close inspection reveals here and there a silver thread. His teeth are good, and his eyes amber, with small flecks of brown in them. He has been vaccinated twice.
It has always been one of my chief ambitions to meet a celebrity. On one or two occasions we have had them at school, but they never sit at the Junior's table. Also, they are seldom connected with either the Drama or The Movies (a slang term but apparently taking a place in our literature).
It was my intention, on being given this subject for my midsummer theme, to seek out Mrs. Bainbridge, a lady author who has a cottage across the bay from ours, and to ask the privilege of sitting at her feet for a few hours, basking in the sunshine of her presence, and learning from her own lips her favorite Flower, her favorite Poem and the favorite child of her brain.
Of all those arts in which the wise excel,
Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.
Duke of Buckingham
I had meant to write my theme on her, but I learned in time that she was forty years of age. Her work is therefore done. She has passed her active years, and I consider that it is not the past of American Letters which is at stake, but the future. Besides, I was more interested in the drama than in literature.
Possibly it is owing to the fact that the girls think I resemble Julia Marlowe, that from my earliest years my mind has been turned toward the stage. I am very determined and fixed in my ways, and with me to decide to do a thing is to decide to do it. I am not of a romantic nature, however, and as I learned of the dangers of the theater, I drew back. Even a strong nature, such as mine is, on occasions, can be influenced. I therefore decided to change my plans, and to write plays instead of acting in them.
At first I meant to write comedies, but as I realized the gravity of life, and its bitterness and disappointments, I turned naturally to tragedy. Surely, as dear Shakespeare says:
The world is a stage
Where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.
This explains my sincere interest in Mr. Beecher. His works were all realistic and sad. I remember that I saw the first one three years ago, when a mere child, and became violently ill from crying and had to be taken home.
The school will recall that last year I wrote a play, patterned on The Divorce, and that only a certain narrowness of view on the part of the faculty prevented it being the class play. If I may be permitted to express an opinion, we of the class of 1917 are not children, and should not be treated as such.
Encouraged by the applause of my class-mates, and feeling that I was of a more serious turn of mind than most of them, who seem to think of pleasure only, I decided to write a play during the summer. I would thus be improving my vacation hours, and, I considered, keeping out of mischief. It was pure idleness which had caused my trouble during the last Christmas holidays. How true it is that the devil finds work for idle hands!
With a play and this theme I believed that the devil would give me up as a total loss, and go elsewhere.
How little we can read the future!
I now proceed to an account of my meeting and acquaintance with Mr. Beecher. It is my intention to conceal nothing. I can only comfort myself with the thought that my motives were innocent, and that I was obeying orders and securing material for a theme. I consider that the attitude of my family is wrong and cruel, and that my sister Leila, being only 20 months older, although out in society, has no need to write me the sort of letters she has been writing. Twenty months is twenty months, and not two years, although she seems to think it is.
I returned home full of happy plans for my vacation. When I look back it seems strange that the gay and innocent young girl of the train can have been! So much that is tragic has since happened. If I had not had a cinder in my eye things would have been different. But why repine? Fate frequently hangs thus on a single hair—an eye-lash, as one may say.
Father met me at the train. I had got the aforementioned cinder in my eye, and a very nice young man had taken it out for me. I still cannot see what harm there was in our chatting together after that, especially as we said nothing to object to. But father looked very disagreeable about it, and the young man went away in a hurry. But it started us off wrong, although I got him—father—to promise not to tell mother.
"I do wish you would be more careful, Bab," he said with a sort of sigh.
"Careful!" I said. "Then it's not doing things, but being found out, that matters!"
"Careful in your conduct, Bab."
"He was a beautiful young man, father," I observed, slipping my arm through his.
"Barbara, Barbara! Your poor mother——"
"Now look here, father" I said. "If it was mother who was interested in him it might be troublesome. But it is only me. And I warn you, here and now, that I expect to be thrilled at the sight of a nice young man right along. It goes up my back and out the roots of my hair."
Well, my father is a real person, so he told me to talk sense, and gave me twenty dollars, and agreed to say nothing about the young man to mother, if I would root for Canada against the Adirondacks for the summer, because of the fishing.
Mother was waiting in the hall for me, but she held me off with both hands.
"Not until you have bathed and changed your clothing, Barbara," she said. "I have never had it."
She meant the whooping cough. The school will recall the epidemic which ravaged us last June, and changed us from a peaceful institution to what sounded like a dog show.
Well, I got the same old room, not much fixed up, but they had put up different curtains anyhow, thank goodness. I had been hinting all spring for new furniture, but my family does not take a hint unless it is chloroformed first, and I found the same old stuff there.
They believe in waiting until a girl makes her debut before giving her anything but the necessities of life.
Sis was off for a week-end, but Hannah was there, and I kissed her. Not that I'm so fond of her, but I had to kiss somebody.
"Well, Miss Barbara!" she said. "How you've grown!"
That made me rather sore, because I am not a child any longer, but they all talk to me as if I were but six years old, and small for my age.
"I've stopped growing, Hannah," I said, with dignity. "At least, almost. But I see I still draw the nursery."
Hannah was opening my suitcase, and she looked up and said: "I tried to get you the blue room, Miss Bab. But Miss Leila said she needed it for house parties."
"Never mind," I said. "I don't care anything about furniture. I have other things to think about, Hannah; I want the school room desk up here."
"Desk!" she said, with her jaw drooping.
"I am writing now," I said. "I need a lot of ink, and paper, and a good lamp. Let them keep the blue room, Hannah, for their selfish purposes. I shall be happy in my work. I need nothing more."
"Writing!" said Hannah. "Is it a book you're writing?"
"A play."
"Listen to the child! A play!"
I sat on the edge of the bed.
"Listen, Hannah," 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 talky at times, and has to be sat upon.
"I care nothing whatever for the Other Sex," I replied haughtily.
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.
"Now and then," I said to Hannah, "I shall read you parts of it. Only you mustn't run and tell mother."
"Why not?" said she, peering into the Suitcase.
"Because I intend to deal with Life," I said. "I shall deal with real Things, and not the way we think them. I am young, but I have thought a great deal. I shall mince nothing."
"Look here, Miss Barbara," Hannah said, all at once, "what are you doing with this whiskey flask? And these socks? And—you come right here, and tell me where you got the things in this suitcase." I stocked over to the bed, and my blood froze in my veins. IT WAS NOT MINE.
Words cannot fully express how I felt. While fully convinced that there had been a mistake, I knew not when or how. Hannah was staring at me with cold and accusing eyes.
"You're a very young lady, Miss Barbara," she said, with her eyes full of Suspicion, "to be carrying a flask about with you." I was as puzzled as she was, but I remained calm and to all appearances Spartan.
"I am young in years," I remarked. "But I have seen Life, Hannah."
Now I meant nothing by this at the time. But it was getting on my nerves to be put in the infant class all the time. The Christmas before they had done it, and I had had my revenge. Although it had hurt me more than it hurt them, and if I gave them a fright I gave myself a worse one. As I said at that time:
Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive.
Sir Walter Scott.
Hannah gave me a horrified glare, and dipped into the suitcase again. She brought up a tin box of cigarettes, and I thought she was going to have delirium tremens at once.
Well, at first I thought the girls at school had played a trick on me, and a low down mean trick at that. There are always those who think it is funny to do that sort of thing, but they are the first to squeal when anything is done to them. Once I put a small garter snake in a girl's muff, and it went up her sleeve, which is nothing to some of the things she had done to me. And you would have thought the school was on fire.
Anyhow, I said to myself that some Smarty was trying to get me into trouble, and Hannah would run to the family, and they'd never believe me. All at once I saw all my cherished plans for the summer gone, and me in the country somewhere with Mademoiselle, and walking through the pasture with a botany in one hand and a folding cup in the other, in case we found a spring a cow had not stepped in. Mademoiselle was once my Governess, but has retired to private life, except in cases of emergency.
I am naturally very quick in mind. The Archibalds are all like that, and when once we decide on a course we stick to it through thick and thin. But we do not lie. It is ridiculous for Hannah to say I said the cigarettes were mine. All I said was:
"I suppose you are going to tell the family. You'd better run, or you'll burst."
"Oh, Miss Barbara, Miss Barbara!" she said. "And you so young to be so wild!"
This was unjust, and I am one to resent injustice. I had returned home with my mind fixed on serious things, and now I was being told I was wild.
"If I tell your mother she'll have a fit," Hannah said, evidently drawn hither and thither by emotion. "Now see here, Miss Bab, you've just come home, and there was trouble at your last vacation that I'm like to remember to my dying day. You tell me how those things got there, like a good girl, and I'll say nothing about them."
I am naturally sweet in disposition, but to call me a good girl and remind me of last Christmas holidays was too much. My natural firmness came to the front.
"Certainly NOT," I said.
"You needn't stick your lip out at me, Miss Bab, that was only giving you a chance, and forgetting my duty to help you, not to mention probably losing my place when the family finds out."
"Finds out what?"
"What you've been up to, the stage, and writing plays, and now liquor and tobacco!"
Now I may be at fault in the narrative that follows. But I ask the school if this was fair treatment. I had returned to my home full of high ideals, only to see them crushed beneath the heal of domestic tyranny.
Necessity is the argument of tyrants;
it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt.
How true are these immortal words.
It was with a firm countenance but a sinking heart that I saw Hannah leave the room. I had come home inspired with lofty ambition, and it had ended thus. Heart-broken, I wandered to the bedside, and let my eyes fall on the suitcase, the container of all my woe.
Well, I was surprised, all right. It was not and never had been mine. Instead of my blue serge sailor suit and my 'robe de nuit' and kimono etc., it contained a checked gentleman's suit, a mussed shirt and a cap. At first I was merely astonished. Then a sense of loss overpowered me. I suffered. I was prostrated with grief. Not that I cared a rap for the clothes I'd lost, being most of them to small and patched here and there. But I had lost the plot of my play. My career was gone.
I was undone.
It may be asked what has this recital to do with the account of meeting a celebrity. I reply that it has a great deal to do with it. A bare recital of a meeting may be news, but it is not art.
A theme consists of Introduction, Body and Conclusion.
This is still the Introduction.
When I was at last revived enough to think I knew what had happened. The young man who took the cinder out of my eye had come to sit beside me, which I consider was merely kindness on his part and nothing like flirting, and he had brought his suitcase over, and they had got mixed up. But I knew the family would call it flirting, and not listen to a word I said.
A madness seized me. Now that everything is over, I realize that it was madness. But "there is a divinity that shapes our ends etc." It was to be. It was Karma, or Kismet, or whatever the word is. It was written in the Book of Fate that I was to go ahead, and wreck my life, and generally ruin everything.
I locked the door behind Hannah, and stood with tragic feet, "where the brook and river meet." What was I to do? How hide this evidence of my (presumed) duplicity? I was innocent, but I looked guilty. This, as everyone knows, is worse than guilt.
I unpacked the suitcase as fast as I could, therefore, and being just about distracted, I bundled the things up and put them all together in the toy closet, where all Sis's dolls and mine are, mine being mostly pretty badly gone, as I was always hard on dolls.
How far removed were those innocent years when I played with dolls!
Well, I knew Hannah pretty well, and therefore was not surprised when, having hidden the trousers under a doll buggy, I heard mother's voice at the door.
"Let me in, Barbara," she said.
I closed the closet door, and said: "What is it, mother?"
"Let me in."
So I let her in, and pretended I expected her to kiss me, which she had not yet, on account of the whooping cough. But she seemed to have forgotten that. Also the kiss.
"Barbara," she said, in the meanest voice, "how long have you been smoking?"
Now I must pause to explain this. Had mother approached me in a sweet and maternal manner, I would have been softened, and would have told the whole story. But she did not. She was, as you might say, steaming with rage. And seeing that I was misunderstood, I hardened. I can be as hard as adamant when necessary.
"What do you mean, mother?"
"Don't answer one question with another."
"How can I answer when I don't understand you?"
She simply twitched with fury.
"You—a mere Child!" she raved. "And I can hardly bring myself to mention it—the idea of your owning a flask, and bringing it into this house—it is—it is——"
Well, I was growing cold and more haughty every moment, so I said: "I don't see why the mere mention of a flask upsets you so. It isn't because you aren't used to one, especially when traveling. And since I was a mere baby I have been accustomed to intoxicants."
"Barbara!" she interjected, in the most dreadful tone.
"I mean, in the family," I said. "I have seen wine on our table ever since I can remember. I knew to put salt on a claret stain before I could talk."
Well, you know how it is to see an enemy on the run, and although I regret to refer to my dear mother as an enemy, still at that moment she was such and no less. And she was beating it. It was the reference to my youth that had aroused me, and I was like a wounded lion. Besides, I knew well enough that if they refused to see that I was practically grown up, if not entirely, I would get a lot of Sis's clothes, fixed up with new ribbons. Faded old things! I'd had them for years.
Better to be considered a bad woman than an unformed child.
"However, mother," I finished, "if it is any comfort to you, I did not buy that flask. And I am not a confirmed alcoholic. By no means."
"This settles it," she said, in a melancholy tone. "When I think of the comfort Leila has been to me, and the anxiety you have caused, I wonder where you get your—your DEVILTRY from. I am positively faint."
I was alarmed, for she did look queer, with her face all white around the rouge. So I reached for the flask.
"I'll give you a swig of this," I said. "It will pull you around in no time."
But she held me off fiercely.
"Never!" she said. "Never again. I shall empty the wine cellar. There will be nothing to drink in this house from now on. I do not know what we are coming to."
She walked into the bathroom, and I heard her emptying the flask down the drain pipe. It was a very handsome flask, silver with gold stripes, and all at once I knew the young man would want it back. So I said:
"Mother, please leave the flask here anyhow."
"Certainly not."
"It's not mine, mother."
"Whose is it?"
"It—a friend of mine loaned it to me."
"Who?"
"I can't tell you."
"You can't TELL me! Barbara, I am utterly bewildered. I sent you away a simple child, and you return to me—what?"
Well, we had about an hour's fight over it, and we ended in a compromise. I gave up the flask, and promised not to smoke and so forth, and I was to have some new dresses and a silk sweater, and to be allowed to stay up until ten o'clock, and to have a desk in my room for my work.
"Work!" mother said. "Career! What next? Why can't you be like Leila, and settle down to having a good time?"
"Leila and I are different," I said loftily, for I resented her tone. "Leila is a child of the moment. Life for her is one grand, sweet Song. For me it is a serious matter. 'Life is real, life is earnest, and the grave is not its goal,'" I quoted in impassioned tones.
(Because that is the way I feel. How can the grave be its goal? THERE MUST BE SOMETHING BEYOND. I have thought it all out, and I believe in a world beyond, but not in a hell. Hell, I believe, 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.)
As I have said, the other side of the compromise was that I was not to carry flasks with me, or drink any punch at parties if it had a stick in it, and you can generally find out by the taste. For if it is what Carter Brooks calls "loaded" it stings your tongue. Or if it tastes like cider it's probably champagne. And I was not to smoke any cigarettes.
Mother was holding out on the sweater at that time, saying that Sis had a perfectly good one from Miami, and why not wear that? So I put up a strong protest about the cigarettes, although I have never smoked but once as I think the school knows, and that only half through, owing to getting dizzy. I said that Sis smoked now and then, because she thought it looked smart; but that, if I was to have a career, I felt that the soothing influence of tobacco would help a lot.
So I got the new sweater, and everything looked smooth again, and mother kissed me on the way out, and said she had not meant to be harsh, but that my great uncle Putnam had been a notorious drunkard, and I looked like him, although of a more refined type.
There was a dreadful row that night, however, when father came home. We were all dressed for dinner, and waiting in the drawing room, and Leila was complaining about me, as usual.
"She looks older than I do now, mother," she said. "If she goes to the seashore with us I'll have her always tagging at my heals. I don't see why I can't have my first summer in peace." Oh, yes, we were going to the shore, after all. Sis wanted it, and everybody does what she wants, regardless of what they prefer, even fishing.
"First summer!" I exclaimed. "One would think you were a teething baby!"
"I was speaking to mother, Barbara. Everyone knows that a debutante 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 flippant manner that men like."
"I intend to keep Barbara under my eyes this summer," mother said firmly. "After last Christmas's happenings, and our discovery today, I shall keep her with me. She need not, however, interfere with you, Leila. Her hours are mostly different, and I will see that her friends are the younger boys."
I said nothing, but I knew perfectly well she had in mind Eddie Perkins and Willie Graham, and a lot of other little kids that hang around the fruit punch at parties, and throw the peas from the croquettes at each other when the footmen are not near, and pretend they are allowed to smoke, but have sworn off for the summer.
I was naturally indignant at Sis's words, which were not filial, to my mind, but I replied as sweetly as possible:
"I shall not be in your way, Leila. I ask nothing but food and shelter, and that perhaps not for long."
"Why? Do you intend to die?" she demanded.
"I intend to work," I said. "It's more interesting than dieing, and will be a novelty in this house."
Father came in just then, and he said:
"I'll not wait to dress, Clara. Hello, children. I'll just change my collar while you ring for the cocktails."
Mother got up and faced him with majesty.
"We are not going to have, any" she said.
"Any what?" said father from the doorway.
"I have had some fruit juice prepared with a dash of bitters. It is quite nice. And I'll ask you, James, not to explode before the servants. I will explain later."
Father has a very nice disposition but I could see that mother's manner got on his nerves, as it got on mine. Anyhow there was a terrific fuss, with Sis playing the piano so that the servants would not hear, and in the end father had a cocktail. Mother waited until he had had it, and was quieter, and then she told him about me, and my having a flask in my suitcase. Of course I could have explained, but if they persisted in misunderstanding me, why not let them do so, and be miserable?
"It's a very strange thing, Bab," he said, looking at me, "that everything in this house is quiet until you come home, and then we get as lively as kittens in a frying pan. We'll have to marry you off pretty soon, to save our piece of mind."
"James!" said my mother. "Remember last winter, please."
There was no claret or anything with dinner, and father ordered mineral water, and criticized the food, and fussed about Sis's dressmaker's bill. And the second man gave notice immediately after we left the dining room. When mother reported that, as we were having coffee in the drawing room, father said:
"Humph! Well, what can you expect? Those fellows have been getting the best half of a bottle of claret every night since they've been here, and now it's cut off. Damned if I wouldn't like to leave myself."
From that time on I knew that I was watched. It made little or no difference to me. I had my work, and it filled my life. There were times when my soul was so filled with joy that I could hardly bare it. I had one act done in two days. I wrote out the love scenes in full, because I wanted to be sure of what they would say to each other. How I thrilled as each marvelous burst of fantasy flowed from my pen! But the dialogue of less interesting parts I left for the actors to fill in themselves. I consider this the best way, as it gives them a chance to be original, and not to have to say the same thing over and over.
Jane Raleigh came over to see me the day after I came home, and I read her some of the love scenes. She positively wept with excitement.
"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 moving picture actors? They never have a chance in the Movies, only acting and not talking."
Well, that sounded logical. 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 daresay," I replied dreamily. "Let the other people worry about that. I can only give them the material, and hope that they have intelligence 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 control my impatience, though passionately 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 sufficient.
But Carter paid more attention to me than he ever had before, and at a tea dance somebody 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 mighty 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 barrel containing silver or linen.
Mother went around with her lips moving as if in prayer, but she was really 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 sew for me. Hannah and she used to interrupt my most precious moments at my desk by running a tape measure around me, or pinning a paper pattern to me. The sewing woman always had her mouth full of pins, and once, owing to my remarking that I wished I had been illegitimate, 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 vinegar 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 sanctuary. 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 Shakespeare 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 suffering 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 family. But when sh