It was a sad, listless little "Princess Lalla" who cupped tiny brown
hands about a crystal ball and pretended to read "past, present and
future" in its mysterious depths as the afternoon crowd of the
carnival's last day in Stanton milled about the attractions in the
Palace of Wonders. There was the crack of an unsuspected whip in the
voice of Gus, the barker, as he bent over her after his oft-repeated
spiel:
"Snap into it, kid! These rubes is lousy with coin and we've got to get
our share. You're crabbin' the act somethin' fierce's afternoon. Step on
it!"
Sally made a valiant effort to obey, but her crystal-gazing that
afternoon was not a riotous success. She made one or two bad blunders,
the worst of which caused a near-panic.
For she was so absorbed in her own disappointment and in contemplating
the effect of her news upon David, when she should tell him that she was
an illegitimate child of a woman who had abandoned her, that her eyes
and intuition were not so keen as they had been.
Although there had been a sharp-faced shrew of a wife clinging to his
arm before he vaulted upon the platform for a "reading," she
mechanically told a meek little middle-aged man that he was in love with
a "zo beau-ti-ful girl wiz golden hair" and that he would "marry wiz
her."
After the poor husband had been snatched from the platform by his
furiously jealous wife and given a most undignified paddling with her
hastily removed shoe--an "added attraction" which proved vastly
entertaining to the carnival crowd but which caused a good many quarters
to find their hasty way back into handbags and trouser pockets--Sally
felt her failure so keenly that she leaned backward in an effort to be
cautious.
"For God's sake, kid, snap out of it before the next show!" Gus pleaded,
mopping his dripping brow with a huge purple-bordered white silk
handkerchief. "I'm part owner of this tent, you know, and you're hittin'
me where I live. Come on, 'at's a good girl! Forget it--whatever's
eatin' on you! This ain't a half-bad world--not a-tall! What if that
sheik of yours is trailin' Nita around? Reckon he's just after her
grouch bag--"
"Her--grouch bag?" Sally seized upon the unfamiliar phrase in order to
put off as long as possible full realization of the heart-stopping news
he was giving her so casually.
"That's right. You're still a rube, ain't you? A grouch bag is a show
business way of sayin' a performer's got a wad salted down to blow with
or buy a chicken farm or, if it's a hard-on-the-eyes dame like Nita, to
catch a man with. Nita's got a roll big enough to choke a boa
constrictor. I seen her countin' it one night when she thought she was
safe. She was, too. I wouldn't warm up to that Jane if she was the last
broad in the world. Now, listen, kid, you have a good, hard cry in the
dress tent before the next show and you'll feel like a new woman. That's
me all over! Never tell a wren to turn off the faucet! Nothin' like a
good cry. I ain't been married four times for nothin'."
Sally waited to hear no more. She rushed out of the Palace of Wonders, a
frantic, fantastic little figure in purple satin trousers and
gold-braided green jacket, her red-sandled feet spurning the
grass-stubbled turf that divided the show tent from the dress tent. And
because she was almost blinded with the tears which Gus, the barker, had
sagely recommended, she collided with another figure in the "alley."
"Look where you're going, you little charity brat, you ----" And Nita's
harsh, metallic voice added a word which Sally Ford had sometimes seen
scrawled in chalk on the high board fence that divided the boys'
playground from the girls' at the orphanage.
So Nita had listened! She had been eavesdropping when Mrs. Bybee had
told Sally the shameful things she had learned from Gramma Bangs about
Sally's birth.
"You can't call me that!" Sally gasped, rage flaming over her,
transforming her suddenly from a timid, brow-beaten child of charity
into a wildcat.
Before Nita, the Hula dancer, could lift a hand to defend herself, a
small purple-and-green clad fury flung itself upon her breast; gilded
nails on brown-painted fingers flashed out, were about to rip down those
painted, sallow cheeks like the claws of the wildcat she had become when
powerful hands seized her by the shoulders and dragged her back.
"What t'ell's going on here?" Gus, the barker, panted as Sally struggled
furiously, still insane with rage at the insult Nita had flung at her.
"Better keep this she-devil out of my sight, Gus, or I'll cut her heart
out!" Nita panted, adjusting the grass skirt, which Sally's furious
onslaught had torn from the dancer's hips, exposing the narrow red satin
tights which ended far above her thin, unlovely knees.
"I'm surprised at you, Sally," Gus said severely, but his small eyes
twinkled at her. "Next time you're having a friendly argument with this
grass-skirt artist, for Gawd's sake settle it by pulling her hair. The
show's gotta go on and some of these rubes like her map. Don't ask me
why. I ain't good at puzzles."
Sally smiled feebly, the passing of her rage having left her feeling
rather sick and foolish. Gus's arm was still about her shoulders, in a
paternal sort of fondness, as Nita switched away, her grass skirt
hissing angrily.
"Kinda foolish of you, Sally, to pick a fight with that dame. She
could-a ruint this pretty face of yours. She's a bad mama, honey, and
you'd better make yourself scarce when she's around. And say, kid--take
a tip from old Gus: no sheik ain't worth fightin' for. I been fought
over myself considerable in my time, and believe me, while two frails
was fightin' for me I was lookin' for another one."
Sally felt shriveled with shame. "I wasn't fighting her because of--of
David," she muttered, digging the toe of one little red sandal into the
dusty grass of the show lot. "Nita called me a--a nasty name. You'd have
fought, too!"
"Sure! but not with a dame like Nita, if I was you! You ain't no match
for her. Now, you trot along to the dress tent and rest or cry or say
your prayers or anything you want to--except fight!--till show time
again. And for God's sake, don't turn your back when Nita's around!"
Sally did not see the Hula dancer again that afternoon, for Nita
belonged to the "girlie show," which had a tent all its own. To
encourage her in her confidence as a crystal-gazer, or rather to bolster
up the faith of the skeptical audience, which had somehow become wise to
the fact that "Princess Lalla" had "pulled some bones," Gus, the barker,
arranged for four or five "schillers"--employes of the carnival, both
men and women, dressed to look like members of the audience--to have
their fortunes told.
Sally, tipped off by a code signal of Gus's, let her imagination run
riot as she read the magic crystal for the "schillers," and to
everything she told them they nodded their heads or slapped their thighs
in high appreciation, loudly proclaiming that "Princess Lalla" was a
wow, a witch, the grandest little fortune-teller in the world. Business
picked up amazingly; quarters were thrust upon Gus with such speed that
he had to form a line of applicants for "past, present and future" upon
Sally's platform.
She did not see David at supper, while she ate in the cook tent after
having carried "Pitty Sing," the midget, to the privilege car. Buck, the
negro chef of the privilege car grinned at her, but David was nowhere to
be seen. Was he "trailin' Nita," as Gus, the barker, had called it?
Jealousy laid a hand of pain about her heart, such a sort of pain that
she wanted, childishly, to stop and examine it. It claimed instant
fellowship in her heart with that other so-new emotion--love. She wanted
all afternoon, until Gus had stopped her heart for a beat or two with
his casual reference to David and Nita, to fly to David for comfort, to
pour out her news to him. She had heard, in anticipation, his softly
spoken, tender "Dear little Sally! Don't mind too much. We have each
other." So far had her imagination run away with her!
It was the last evening of the carnival in Stanton, and money rolled
into the pockets of the concessionaires and the showmen.
"Last chance to see the tallest man on earth and the littlest woman!
Last chance, folks!"
It was already a little old to Sally--the spieler's ballyhoo. She could
have repeated it herself. Glamor was fading from the carnival. The
dancing girls were not young and beautiful, as they had seemed at first;
they had never danced on Broadway in Ziegfeld's Follies; they never
would. They were oldish-young women who sneered at the "rubes" and had
calluses on the bottoms of their aching feet from dancing on rough board
platforms.
Just before the last show Sally wandered out into the midway from the
Palace of Wonders, money in her hand which Pop Bybee had advanced to
her. But it was lonely "playing the wheels" all by herself, and although
Eddie Cobb fixed it so that she won a big Kewpie doll with pink maline
skirts and saucy, marcelled red hair, there was little thrill in its
possession. When a forlornly weeping little girl stopped her tears to
gape covetously at the treasure, Sally gave it up without a pang, and
wandered on to the salt water taffy stand, where one of her precious
nickels went for a small bag of the tooth-resisting sweet.
She no longer minded or noticed the crowd that collected and followed
her--wherever she went; she had become used to it already. The crowd did
not interest her, for it did not hold David, who was forced to hide
ignominiously in the show train, for fear the heavy hand of a local
constable would close menacingly over his shoulder. At the thought Sally
shuddered and flung away her taffy. They would be leaving Stanton
tonight, leaving danger behind them. It had not occurred to her to ask
where the show train was going. But it was going away, away. David could
come out of hiding. Bybee had said the authorities in other states
wouldn't be interested in a couple of minors who had done nothing worse
than "bust a farmer's leg and beat it--"
"What kinda burg is the capital?" she was startled to hear a hot-dog
concessionaire call to the ticket-seller for the ferris wheel.
"Pretty good pickin's," the ticket-seller answered. "We run into a spell
of bad weather there last year and it was a Jonah town, but it looks
good this season. The Kidder says he has to plank down half a grand for
the lot--the dirty bums--them city councillors."
"We're going to the capital next?" Sally leaned over the counter to ask
the hot-dog man.
"Sure, kid. Didn't you know? I heard you come from that burg. Old home
week for Eddie, too. You and him going out to give the old homestead the
once-over?"
Sally did not wait to answer. Although it was almost time for the last
show the little red sandals flew toward the side-tracked show train--and
David. Her jealousy, even her just-realized love for him, were
forgotten. There was only fear--fear of iron bars and shameful uniforms,
iron bars which would cage David's superb young body and break his
spirit; fear of the reformatory, in which she would again become a
dull-eyed unit in a hopeless army, but branded now with a shameful
scarlet letter which she did not deserve.
They couldn't go to the capital city where they were both known; they
would have to run away again, walk all night through the dark, fugitives
from "justice."
----
"Poor kid!" David consoled her after her first almost hysterical
outburst. "I can't talk to you now, and you shouldn't be here. You've
got to go back for your last performance. The show has to go on. They've
been decent to us, and we can't throw them over without warning."
"But David, we've got to run away again!" Sally whimpered, clinging to
both his arms, bare to the shoulders in anticipation of his work in
helping to load the carnival for its thirty-mile drag to the capital.
"We can't go back to Capital City! We'll be caught! Listen, David--"
"Go back to your show tent," David commanded her sternly. "I'll be
working pretty late helping to load up, but I'll whistle a bar from
'Always' under your Pullman window. We all sleep on the train tonight,
and pull out for Capital City some time before morning. We pick up the
engine at three o'clock, I believe. Plenty of time then to decide what
to do." He shook her a little to make her stop shivering and whimpering
with fear. "Buck up, honey! I'm not going to let the police get you;
neither is Pop Bybee. Dear little Sally!" and he stooped from his great
height to brush the tip of her short, brown-powdered nose with his lips.
During the last performance in the Palace of Wonders a village
constable, his star shining importantly from the lapel of his Palm Beach
suit, sauntered leisurely through the tent, eyeing the freaks with
skeptical amusement and asking all the Smart-Aleck questions which the
more timid members of the carnival crowd longed to ask and did not dare.
"Bet you wouldn't let me put any of that glass you're eatin' in my
coffee," he guffawed to the ostrich man whom Gus, the barker, was
ballyhooing at the moment. "I'm on to all you guys. Rock candy, ain't
it?"
"Sure, officer," Gus interrupted his spiel to answer deferentially.
"Won't you have a little snack with the human ostrich? I particularly
recommend these nails. Boffo eats only the choicest sixpenny nails; will
accept no substitutes. And if a nail's rusty, out with it! Sort of an
epicure, Boffo is! Have a handful of glass and nails with Boffo,
officer! Bighearted, that Boffo!"
The constable refused hastily and the crowd roared with delight. The
discomfited officer of the law ambled over to make his disparaging
inspection of Jan, the giant from Holland.
"Pull up your pants legs and let me see your stilts," the constable
ordered authoritatively. "I ain't the sucker you guys think I am. I'm on
to your tricks--been going to carnivals man and boy for fifty years."
With his eyes as remote and sad and patient as if he had not heard or
understood a word of the constable's insult, Jan obeyed, rolling his
trousers to the knees. When the Doubting Thomas representative of the
law had pinched the pale, putty-colored flesh of Jan's pitifully thin
calves and found them to be flesh-and-blood indeed, he passed on, red of
face, furious at the snorts of laughter which filled the tent.
"What if he takes a notion to wash my face?" Sally shivered, bending
low, in an attitude of mystic concentration, over the crystal which she
was pretending to read for a farmer's wife who had no interest in Boffo,
the human ostrich, but who did have perfect faith in the powers of
"Princess Lalla." "What if he is just pretending to be interested in the
other freaks and is really looking for me? Has Nita dared to tip him off
that Sally Ford is here?"
But her little sing-song voice droned on, predicting prosperity and
happiness and "a journey by land and sea" for the credulous farmer's
wife.
"What's your real name, sister?" the constable demanded loudly,
officiously, stamping up the steps that led to the little platform.
"Please," Sally pleaded prettily, making her eyes wide and cloudy with
mystic visions, "do not een-terr-upt! The veesion she will go away!"
"You let her alone, Sam Pelton!" the farmer's wife commanded tartly. "Go
on, Princess Lalla. I think you're just wonderful--knowing about my
mother being dead and even her name and all."
And Sally continued the reading with Constable Pelton breathing audibly
upon her neck as she bent her small head gravely over the crystal. When
she could think of nothing else to tell the highly pleased woman, she
was desperate. It seemed to her that everyone in the tent was looking at
her, reading panic in her trembling fingers, in her fluttering eyelids.
"Gimme a knockdown to my past, present and future, Sister," the
constable suggested with heavy sarcasm and jocularity. "Reckon an
officer of the law don't have to pay. And you'd better make it a good
one, or I'll run you in for obtaining money under false pretenses. Come
on, now! Miz Holtzman has already give you a good tip-off, and I guess
my star speaks for itself. Knowing my name and my business, you oughta
be able to fake a pretty good line for me, but if you don't tell me my
wife's name, how many kids I got, where I come from, and anything else
I'm a-mind to ask you, I'll make you a present of free board and lodging
at the county's expense."
Unknown to Sally, whose eyes were fixed, blind with fear, upon the
crystal tightly cupped in her ice-cold palms, Gus, the barker, had drawn
near enough to hear the constable's threats and demands.
"Sure, officer!" he boomed heartily, to Sally's amazement, "just ask the
little lady anything you like. She sees all, knows all. Step right up,
folks, and hear Princess Lalla, favorite crystal-gazer to the Sultan of
Turkey before she escaped from his harem, tell your fellow-townsman,
Constable Sam Pelton, the truth, the whole truth and something besides
the truth--a few things that are going to happen to him that Officer Sam
don't yet dream of! Step right up, folks! Don't be bashful! Step up and
get an earful about your esteemed fellow-townsman and officer of the
law--"
Sally felt the ice melting slowly in her veins. Dear Gus! He was
stalling, gaining time, subtly frightening the constable, whose face had
gone redder and redder, whose eyes glanced with furtive unease from the
crystal to the grinning faces of his "fellow-townsmen," who apparently
had no great love for Constable Sam Pelton.
Then that which Gus had arranged by means of a code signal took place.
Two "schillers," hastily summoned by a carnival employe, suddenly broke
into loud curses and sharp, slapping blows which echoed in the instantly
quiet tent.
"Pick my pocket, would you?" the raucous voice of a "schiller" demanded
between slaps and punches. "I seen you--sneakin' your hand in my
pocket!"
Constable Pelton, glad to be able to assert his authority, glad also,
possibly, to escape a too intimate revelation of his past, bounded from
the platform, collared the fighting "schillers," and dragged them
triumphantly away.
When the last stragglers of the carnival crowd had been ushered rather
unceremoniously from the tent, Sally rose from her chair and pattered
swiftly to where Gus, the barker, stood talking with Pop Bybee, owner
and manager of Bybee's Bigger and Better Carnival.
"Thank you, Gus! I was scared nearly to death! It was wonderful the way
you stalled along till those two rubes--" she was already becoming
familiar with carnival lingo--"got into a fight. Wasn't it lucky for me
they did?" she added naively.
"Hell, kid!" Gus grinned at her and tilted his derby more rakishly over
his left eye. "It was a frame-up. Them's our boys. The guy that
pretended to have his pocket picked will swear he made a mistake, and
the worst old Sam can do is to have 'em fined for disorderly conduct.
I'll square it with 'em, and they'll be in Capital City by show-time
tomorrow."
Pop Bybee chuckled richly, his bright, pale-blue eyes gleaming in the
lobster-red expanse of his old face. "Didn't I tell you, child, that the
law couldn't touch you long as you stuck with the carnival? Dave tells
me you're babbling about running away again because we're hitting the
trail for your home town tonight. You stick, Sally. Pop Bybee and Gus
and the rest of us will take care of you."
Sally's lips parted to tell him of Nita's threat if she did not
relinquish her claim upon David's love and friendship, but before the
first word tumbled out, the old inhibition against tattling, taught her
in the stern school of life in an orphanage, restrained her.
"You're all so good to me," she choked, then turned abruptly away to
where "Pitty Sing," the midget, was impatiently awaiting her human
sedan-chair.
"I don't want to influence you unduly," the midget piped in her prim,
high little voice, "but Mr. Bybee and Gus are right. You are safer with
the carnival than anywhere else in the state, and if you ran away I
should be very sorry. I like you, Sally. I like you very much."
The dress tent was taken down by the "white hopes" almost before the
women performers had had time to change from show clothes to nightgowns
and kimonos. By twelve o'clock the lot was as bare of tents and booths
and ferris wheels and motordromes and "whips" and merry-go-rounds as if
those mechanical symbols of joy and fun had never existed.
And Sally lay on the lumpy, smelly mattress of her upper berth in the
ancient Pullman car, waiting for her David's whistled signal--a bar of
"Always." She was fully dressed.
Her heart sang the words--"I'll be loving you--always! Not for just an
hour, not for just a day, not for just a year, but--always!"
She could have sent word to David by Gus or Pop Bybee that she had given
up her frantic plan to run away; that he need not meet her in the
darkness of the pulsing, hot June night. But--she had not--
It came then--clear and true, the whistled notes of the song which her
heart sang to David--"I'll be loving you--always!"
She edged over the side of the berth, the toe of her slipper groping
until it found the edge of the lower berth in which the midget was
sleeping. When she was safe in the aisle she cast a fearful glance up
and down the car, and noted with uneasy surprise that Nita's berth,
directly opposite the midget's, was still unoccupied, the green curtains
spread wide so that the grayish-white blur of the sheet and pillow was
plainly discernible in the faint light from the one electric globe over
the door.
But she had no time now to worry about Nita or Nita's threats. David was
awaiting her--with the song still humming its sweet, extravagant promise
in his heart. Or--was it? Had he chosen the song idly? Had he meant
anything by that teasing kiss on the tip of her nose, by his "Dear
little Sally!"
"Being in love hurts something terrible," Sally shook her head at her
own turbulent emotions, unconsciously employing the homely language of
the orphanage. "But even if he doesn't love me I'm glad I love him.
David, David!"