Girl Alone Part 35

Sally opened her lips to speak, but the futility of the retort she was about to make overwhelmed her. How could she forget those twelve lonely, miserable years in a state orphanage? And how could her mother possibly expect her to forget David, who had been her only friend, her "perfect knight" when such dreadful trouble as Enid, in her sheltered life, could hardly imagine, had made her a hunted, terror-stricken fugitive from "justice"? David to whom she was "half married," David whom she would always love, even if she never saw him again? But she _would_ see him!

"Please don't get that sulky, stubborn look on your face, Sally!" Enid spoke almost sharply. "I am thinking of David, too. Do you really think it would be fair to him to ask him to come to New York merely for a party, to see the girl he cannot hope to marry make her debut in a society to which he could never belong? Don't be utterly selfish, darling! Think of me a little, too! David knows-the truth. You must know it would be painful for me to see him, after the story I told you in his presence. I want to forget, Sally, and just be happy, now that I have my daughter with me-" The lovely voice trembled with threatened tears, and the cornflower-blue eyes pleaded almost humbly with implacable sapphire ones.

"I'm sorry, Mother," Sally answered steadily. "But-you promised. I've done everything you asked me to do for more than two years. I kept _my_ promise not to write to David, because all the time I was counting on you to keep yours."

Enid Barr flushed and tapped angrily with her pen against the edge of the desk. "Of course, if you put it that way, I have no choice! How shall Linda address the invitation?"

"Thank you, Mother," Sally cried, stooping swiftly to lay her lips against her mother's golden hair. "You've made me awfully happy." Her voice shook a little with awed delight as she gave her mother the only address she knew-David's grandfather's name and the R. F. D. route on which his farm lay.

"I suppose I'm having all this bother for nothing," Enid brightened.

"The boy would be an idiot to spend the money on the trip-even if he has it to spend!"

A beautiful light glowed in Sally's wide, dreaming eyes. "David will come," she said softly. "He will come if he has to walk."

"A hiking costume would be so appropriate at a society girl's debut,"

Enid pointed out, a little maliciously, but she smiled then, a little secret, satisfied smile, as if she hoped he would look a rube among the sleek young men who would be asked to view her daughter when she was officially put "on the market."

But Sally was too happy to notice. "May I write him, too, Mother? It would look so queer, just sending him an invitation, without a word-"

"Absolutely not!" Enid was stern. "The invitation is more than sufficient. Now run along, darling, and dress for Bobby's luncheon. It seems to me there were never so many sub-deb parties as there are this year, but you simply must go to all of them, if your first season is to be a success. The list is going to be miles long," she worried. "Perhaps it would have been wiser to have your party at the Ritz, as Mrs. Proctor and most of the others are doing, but there seems to be little reason to keep up an enormous establishment like this if you can't entertain in it."

"'Coming out' seems so silly," Sally protested with sudden, unusual spirit. "Of course with me it's different. The crowd doesn't know me very well yet, but nearly all of the debs have been really 'out' for two or three years. They've been prom-trotting and going to the opera and the theater alone with me, even to night clubs-I can't see what real difference it will make to most of them-"

"Of course you can't," Enid said with unintentional cruelty. "You haven't been reared to this sort of thing. But you'll learn. Run along now, and look your prettiest. And by the way, if you have a minute, won't you stop by the photographers to choose the poses to be released for publication? The society editors are calling up frantically. All they've had are snapshots of you, and I want them to print a picture that will do you justice. You're really the loveliest thing on the deb list this year, you know. But do run along! I shan't get a blessed thing done if you stay here gossiping with me."

Sally laughed, kissed her mother and ran from the room, b.u.mping into Linda Rice, who was discreetly waiting outside the office until the interview between mother and daughter should be finished.

"Linda," she whispered, her face rosy with sweet embarra.s.sment, "I gave Mother the name of a very special friend of mine, to put on the invitation list. You'll be a darling and mail it out today, won't you?

You see, he lives in the Middle West and I want him to have plenty of time to plan to come. David Nash is the name." Her voice caressed the three beloved syllables more tenderly than she realized, and Linda Rice nodded her a knowing smile.

"Of course, Sally. And I hope he comes. I'll mail it this very afternoon."

Sally ran up the broad, circular staircase to the third floor, scorning to use the "lift" which Courtney Barr had had installed in the Fifth Avenue mansion a few years before.

She never entered her own suite of rooms-sitting room, bedroom, dressing room and bath-without first an uneasy feeling that she was trespa.s.sing and then a shock of delight that it was hers indeed. Now she pa.s.sed slowly through the rooms, trying to see them with David's eyes, or even with the eyes of the forlorn little Sally Ford who had slaved sixteen hours a day on the Carson farm for her "board and keep."

Suddenly a picture flashed across her mind-the two-rooms-and-lean-to shack in which she and David had eaten what was to have been their wedding breakfast. A great nostalgia swept over her-not only for David, but for plain people working together to make a home and to support their children.

All her life in the orphanage she had dreamed of delicate foods, skin-caressing, lovely fabrics, s.p.a.cious, gracious rooms. And now she had them-and she was frightened to nausea, because they were a barrier between her and David and all the realities of life and love which she had so nearly grasped when she was slaving on the farm, working as "Princess Lalla" in the carnival, fleeing from the pursuit of the law with only David to protect her.

She dressed listlessly for the sub-deb luncheon at the Ritz, chatted and laughed and pretended to be as frivolous and "wild" as any of her new friends; went to Claire Bainbridge's tea that afternoon; went to the theater with her mother and adopted father that night, went, went, went during the next few days, but her heart was concerned with only one question: would David come? She had been so sure, so arrogantly, proudly sure that he would come even if he had to walk-

On the fifth day after the invitation was despatched his telegram came.

Color-all colors swirling together in a mad kaleidoscope of incredible beauty; the muted, insistent throbbing of a violin played by an unseen artist; the rosy glow of light which apparently had no source; the rustling whisper of silks; the polite, subdued buzz of middle-aged conversation; the shrill but musical clamor of very young voices; the subtle, faint odor of French perfumes; the stronger, more sickening odor of too many hothouse flowers-

Sally Barr, who had been Sally Ford, was "play-acting" again. She was playing the role of a society debutante. She was "playing-acting" and enjoying it, with a sort of surface enjoyment that made her look the perfect picture of the popular and beautiful debutante.

She knew that her cheeks were like tea roses, her sapphire eyes as brilliant as the jewel whose color they had imitated so perfectly. She knew that her wind-blown bob of gleaming, silky-soft black hair was ravis.h.i.+ng, that her "period costume" of sea-sh.e.l.l pink taffeta and silver lace, made sinfully expensive by its intricate embroidery of seed pearls, was the most beautiful dress worn by any debutante of the season so far.

She knew all these things because the enviously ecstatic compliments of the other girls had told her so, because Enid Barr, her mother, who all these people thought was only her adopted mother, was luminous with pride and joy in her, because even Courtney Barr, with whom she still felt ill-at-ease, looked like a pouter-pigeon in his possessive satisfaction.

But Sally Barr was play-acting and the Sally Ford she had been looked on, in a skimpy little white lawn dress edged with five-cent lace, and watched the performance with critical eyes, or, rather, watched as often as those hungry, desperate eyes turned away from the door, unable to bear the sight of newcomers because none of them was David.

The Sally Ford in the skimpy little white lawn dress which the orphanage provide for Sundays and for rare dress-up occasions wondered how these strange, glamorous people could not see her beneath the sea-sh.e.l.l pink taffeta with its silver lace and precious seed-pearl embroidery. And this Sally Ford whom they could not see kept telling herself over and over that her dreams had come true: she had a mother who was rich and beautiful and tender and wise-nearly always wise, except about David; she was living in a mansion more magnificent than the orphaned "play-actress" had ever been able to conjure; she was beautiful and popular; these strange people who were "in society" were here because Sally Ford-no, Sally Barr!-was making her debut, was being accepted as one of them.

She told herself these things and her eyes again darted to the door, hungry for the sign of a penniless, 23-year-old farmer boy who would be as much out of place in this ballroom among these strange, glamorous people as Sally Ford in her skimpy little white lawn dress.

Three words hammered their staccato message ceaselessly on her listening, watching nerves: "Coming. Thanks. David." Three words which had broken the silence of two and a half years.

Coming-thanks-David-Coming-thanks-David-

"Darling, this is Mrs. Allenby, a very old and dear friend of mine-"

Sally Barr smiled her shy, sweet, little-girl smile and Sally Ford noted the success of it critically as the frumpy, dyed-haired little old lady pa.s.sed on down the receiving line. Coming-thanks-David-But, oh, was he coming?

She stole a glance at the tiny watch set in the circle of diamonds that banded her bare arm just below the elbow. Half past eleven. Dancing would begin at twelve. She had been smiling and twittering and looking sweet and demure or provocative and gay since eight o'clock, when the dinner for the debutantes had begun.

How much longer could she keep it up? It was really absurd for them to suppose that she could go on like this until three or four o'clock in the morning, when her heart was broken-

CHAPTER XVIII

"Mr. David Nas.h.!.+"

Nothing, no one could have held her. The words had scarcely lift the butler's lips when Sally reached David's side, her full skirt, lengthened to the tips of her slippers by the frosty silver lace, billowing like sails at the mooring of the snug little bodice.

She seized his gloved hands, her joy-widened eyes blazing over his face, his adored, so well-remembered face.

"Oh, David! David! I thought you weren't coming! I'd have died if you hadn't come!" She stepped back a pace, her small hands swinging his as if she were a joyous child and there were no one else in the ballroom at all. "You look older, David! You haven't been sick? You worked too hard to finish college? Oh, David-"

His eyes laughed at her through a barrier of embarra.s.sment, and his startlingly grim young face softened. It was true that he looked much older; boyishness had left him, and Sally could have screamed out her pain that this was so. He was thinner, or appeared to be, in his perfectly fitting evening clothes. Odd to see him dressed like that, she thought, near to tears.

She had seen him in overalls and cheap "jeans" and in decent but inexpensive tweeds. She had seen his big-muscled arms bare, the summer sun gilding the fine hairs upon them; she had seen him sweating over the cook stove in the privilege car of Bybee's Bigger and Better Carnival Shows, stripped to a thin cotton unders.h.i.+rt.

But she had never before seen him like this-immaculate, correct, of a pattern, apparently, with all other well-dressed young college men. And she was illogically hurt, felt as if the correctly stiff bosom of his s.h.i.+rt was a veritable wall between the old David and the old Sally-

"They've cut off your beautiful hair," were his first words.

She stood still, her hands slowly releasing his, feeling his eyes rove over her, as hers had swept over him, and she did not need to look into his eyes to find that he was withdrawing from her, alienated, bewildered, saddened.

She wanted to cry out to him, to beat his breast with her hands: "It's Sally, David! Sally Ford underneath, Sally who loves you better than anything in the world." But she did not say it, for Enid Barr was at her elbow, and it was her mother's coldest most polite voice that was welcoming David.

"We're so glad you could come, Mr. Nash. Did you have a pleasant journey? I'm glad. Sally, you _must_ come back into the receiving line, darling. I'll introduce Mr. Nash."

The next hour was an almost unbearable eternity to Sally. But she "play-acted" through it-gave the tips of her fingers to late comers, smiled, murmured appropriate phrases which Enid had painstakingly taught her; opened the ball; danced, in rapid succession with the most importunate of her male guests, for Enid, reluctantly acceding to the new informality, had not insisted upon dance cards.