Part 8 in a series
Old News is attempting to paraphrase "Billy of Arkansas," a love/temperance novel set in Little Rock after World War I and written by a then-famous Arkansas writer, Bernie Babcock (1868-1962). Also the founder of today's Museum of Discovery, Babcock wrote bestsellers including "The Soul of Ann Rutledge," a novel about Abraham Lincoln's first true love. The Arkansas Democrat serialized her "Billy" story in 1922.
To catch up on the plot, see part 1, published Feb. 13, at arkansasonline.com/213start. Follow the links from there.
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Help! I'm trapped in a paraphrase and can't get out.
As though from a dream, I recall a time when almost every Old News column told a different story, one that the Arkansas Gazette or Arkansas Democrat had reported 100 years before. Each Monday brought fresh curiosity.
Alas! Now we have Billy of Arkansas, Billy of Arkansas. Week after week after week, "Billy of Arkansas." Today, here's Part 8 in this series on ... "Billy of Arkansas."
Last week (arkansasonline.com/43luv), Billy Camelton, the heroine of Bernie Babcock's 1922 temperance/love story, spoke ecstatically about how she knew her Army captain adored her. Then her sharp-tongued schoolmate, Jane Bierce, gave her quite the lecture about war and professional soldiers. And socialism. Jane loves socialism.
It may help our understanding of this historical novel to note that the story was written before and after and perhaps even during World War I, which was not the heroic communal struggle to save the free world that World War II would be. The Great War slaughtered a generation of Europeans, causing famine and desperation. Did it even end? On paper, perhaps, but in real life ... . In a lightweight way, "Billy of Arkansas" grapples with the doubts and -isms that troubled the "Lost Generation" of American writers made famous by English textbooks.
Also, we should remember that Jane Bierce is only one of many vivid characters in Billy Camelton's world, and Jane does not necessarily speak for Babcock. I've noticed that Jane's brother, John Bierce, whom we have not met so far but about whom we know enough to imagine his riding in like Prince Charming on a charger, is a capitalist.
Today, I shall tell you what happens at Billy's engagement party.
SMOKE GETS IN HER EYES
It's a splendorous ball. Never has a handsomer couple stood together to receive congratulations than Capt. Sidney Larvante and Miss Billy Camelton. Finely proportioned, with that military bearing, good manners and a general air of distinction, he draws admiration and sighs; and the bewitching young lady in her carefully selected gown radiates happiness and success.
Success, because Billy also feels the pleasure of conquest. Several others in the room have wanted him. Certain men possess, Babcock writes in 1922, "the transferring power of sex by the look of an eye, the tone of a voice and the touch of a hand." Larvante has this subtle power. She adds that young women receive this attention unconsciously, and sexual attraction "being a vital part of love, it is often mistaken for love."
Billy leads the dance with her lover, after which she gives others the pleasure of dancing with her. Jane's hairstyle comes a bit undone, and so during an intermission, Billy follows her friend into a dressing room. While waiting, Billy steps through a window that opens onto a balcony into the cool night air. At the other end of the balcony is another window, which opens into a smoking room.
She overhears her captain's voice. She hears her name. With a smile she moves near the window.
She hears one of her disappointed suitors, the deceiver Brighton Day. He is saying, "On the whole, you are to be congratulated, but you'll find when you come to know her as well as I do, she's a cat, and cats, Captain, have claws no matter how thick the velvet that covers them."
Through curtains, Billy can see Larvante and Day inside, smoking. Her heart pounds as she anticipates her lover's defense. He remains silent, leisurely blowing out smoke.
Then, in his musical drawl, he replies, "But you will admit that even cats are adorable when they happen to possess three plantations and a city block." And he laughs.
Day laughs back, then opines that Billy will show her claws when she realizes her wealth entered into "the deal."
Again, Billy sees her lover blow out a cloud and watch it circle above his head before he says: "She will not find it out. Love is blind and Billy's the hopelessly incurable kind. She thinks I am crazy about her. I shall see to it that love stays blind. It is the easiest way to manage a woman. Billy will not be hard to manage."
"Perhaps not," Day agrees, because Billy really believes her dismissed suitors wanted her and not her money.
Larvante laughs at how "delightfully unsophisticated" Billy is. "It seems never to have occurred to her that old Bill Camelton's 'long green' might be something worth having."
Worse revelations follow as Day warns, "You will go to bed at sundown, and your midnight suppers with your charming widow will be things of the past, for Billy is a Puritan as well as a cat." He adds that Larvante had best not criticize her dead, idolized grandfather.
"They say the old codger went barefooted and hatless when he was founding his fortune peddling tin pans," the captain jokes. He adds that he has no beef with the old man's stinginess because it means that now he, Larvante, can afford a trip to Japan. "Billy wants to go to some quiet place on the Maine coast where we can be 'all alone together.' But Japan for me, and Billy will see it that way without any trouble. It always pleases a woman to give in to a man when she loves him."
Billy stumbles blindly back to Jane and begs to lie down. Alarmed at her white face and trembling lips, Jane offers to call the captain.
"No — call nobody," Billy says. "I will be better in a minute. Wet your handkerchief and put it over my eyes."
A moment later Billy stands up and shakily asks Jane to call her car and make excuses to her next dance partner. She asks Jane to dance with Larvante so he won't miss Billy. If Larvante offers to follow Billy home, Jane must not let him.
Jane helps her into her wrap, and when the car arrives, Billy drops her head on Jane's shoulders and weeps. Jane urges her, "Let me go with you." But Billy is adamant: "Stay here and keep him away from me."
DISILLUSIONED
Sometime later, Jane finds Billy at home, sprawled across her bed and sobbing.
Billy pulls off her diamond engagement ring, saying, "Take this, the end of the beautiful dream has come," and removing the silver scarab ring Jane's brother John sent her for graduation, "this too, for the 'immortality of love' is all a sham."
While Billy goes on wailing that love doesn't exist, Jane stops her: "He is a real villain, and I shall feel that you have disgraced your womanhood unless you thoroughly despise him." Billy should thank God for letting her learn the truth in time, Jane says.
Jane opens her hand and looks at the two rings. Then she tells Billy she must keep the little scarab ring because if her brother says he thinks love is immortal then he believes it. John knows something about false love. He was engaged to an innocent, appealing girl who without warning dumped him to marry a shoe manufacturer. John learned about it from a newspaper.
And yet "one night at the opera when the music had lifted me almost to heaven, I asked John if it were not the sweetest music on earth and he said: 'The music of little feet is sweeter, Jane.'" After that night John sent the scarab ring to his sister's little pal Billy, as a graduation gift, including his message about the immortality of love.
Billy agrees to take back the ring, but only "as a constant warning never again to believe a word a man says."
Next week we'll see her take her broken heart to New York and fall in with striking factory workers.
[This is a series. See part 9 at arkansasonline.com/410john/]
Email: cstorey@adgnewsroom.com