Sally's first impulse, when she saw the children of the orphanage come
tumbling into the Palace of Wonders tent, was to flee. She was so
conscious of being Sally Ford, whose rightful place was with those
staring, shy little girls in white lawn "Sunday" dresses, that she
completely forgot for one moment of pure terror that to them she would
merely be "Princess Lalla," favorite crystal-gazer to the Sultan of
Turkey before she escaped from his harem.
Cowering low in her high-backed gilded chair, in an effort to make
herself as small and inconspicuous as possible--a useless effort really,
since she was by far the prettiest and most romantic figure in the tent,
dressed as she was in Oriental trappings--she watched the children, whom
she knew so well, with a pang of homesickness.
Not that she would want to be back with them! But they were her people,
the only chums she had ever known. How well she knew how they felt,
liberated for one blessed afternoon from the bleak corridors of the
orphanage, catapulted by someone's generosity into fairyland. For to
them the carnival was fairyland. These romance-and-beauty-starved
orphans saw only glamor and wonder, believed with all their hearts every
extravagant word that Gus, the barker, uttered in his stentorian bawl.
Suddenly love and compassion filled her heart to over-flowing. She
wanted to run down the steps that led to her little platform and gather
Clara and Thelma and Betsy to her breast. She felt so much older and
wiser than she had been two weeks ago, when she had "play-acted" for
them as they scrubbed the floor of the dormitory. How awed and admiring
they would be if, when their thin little bodies were pressed tight in
her arms, she should whisper, "It's me--Sally--play-acting! It's me,
kids!" But of course she couldn't do it; she would be betraying not only
herself but David, and she would rather die than that David should be
caught and punished for defending her against Clem Carson.
As the children milled excitedly in the tent, huddling together in
groups like sheep, holding each other's hands, giggling and whispering
together as their awed eyes roamed from one "freak" to another, Sally
searched their faces hungrily, jealously.
Thelma had cut a deep gash in her cheek; it would leave a scar.
Six-year-old Betsy had a summer cold and no handkerchief; her cheeks
were painted poppy-red with fever, or perhaps it was only excitement.
There was a new little girl whom Sally had never seen before, such a
homely little runt of a girl, with enormous, hunted eyes and big
freckles on her putty-colored cheeks. Her snuff-colored hair had been
clipped close to her scalp, so that her poor little round head looked
like the jaw of a man who has not shaved for three days.
Clara and Thelma were mothering her, importantly, each holding one of
her little claw-hands, and shrilling explanations and information at
her.
But where was Mrs. Stone--"old Stone-Face"--herself? Sally knew very
well that the children had not come alone.
While Gus was discoursing grandiloquently upon the talents of Boffo, the
human ostrich, Sally sat very prim and apparently composed, her watchful
eyes veiled by the scrap of black lace that reached to the tip of her
adorable little nose. Undoubtedly the philanthropist was a man--it was
nearly aways a politician courting favor who won it cheaply and
impressively by "treating" the orphans to a day at the circus or
carnival or to a movie. But if he were present, as the philanthropic
politician invariably was, Sally could not find him. That was odd, too,
for he was usually the most prominent person at such an affair, taking
great pains that no reporters who might happen to be present should
overlook him and his great kindness of heart.
Then little old-maidish Miss Pond, sentimental little Miss Pond, who had
befriended Sally by telling her all she knew of the child's parentage,
came hurrying nervously into the tent. She had undoubtedly been detained
at the ticket booth and was sure, judging from her anxious, nervous
manner, that the children had gotten into mischief during her brief
absence.
Three or four of the little girls ran to cling to her hands, abjectly
courting notice as Sally had known they would. But with a few
absent-minded pats she shooed them away and bustled anxiously toward a
woman whom Sally had not noticed before, so complete had been her
absorption in the children.
The woman stood aloof near the platform of "the girl nobody can lift,"
listening to Gus, the barker, with a slight, charming smile of amusement
on her beautiful mouth. When Miss Pond joined her timidly,
deferentially, the "lady," as Sally instinctively thought of her from
the first moment that she become aware of her, turned slightly, so that
"Princess Lalla," whose platform was quite near, got a complete and
breath-taking view of her beauty.
"Oh!" Sally breathed ecstatically, her little brown-painted hands
clasping each other tightly in her lap. "Oh, you're beautiful! You are
like a real princess, or a queen." But she did not say the words aloud.
Behind the little black lace veil her sapphire eyes widened and glowed;
her breath came quickly over her parted, carmined lips.
The woman, who seemed scarcely older than a girl but who, by her poise
and a certain maturity in her face, gave Sally the impression that she
was a queen rather than a princess, had taken her hat off, as if the
heat oppressed her. It was a smart, trim little thing of silvery-green
felt, that had cupped her small head like the green cup that holds a
flower. And her face was the flower, a flower bursting into bloom with
the removal of the hat.
Sally had never in all her life seen hair like that--shimmering waves of
pure gold, slightly rumpled by the removal of the hat, so that single
threads of it caught the light from the gas jet that burned day and
night in the rather dark tent. Her skin, pale with the heat of the day,
was creamy-white, lineless, smooth and rich, so that Sally's fingers
longed to touch it reverently. Surely it could not feel like other
flesh; it was made of something finer and rarer than cells and blood,
dermis and epidermis.
Her small lovely mouth, soft and full-lipped as a child's, was tender
and amused and proud, the mouth of a woman who has always been adored
for her beauty but whom adoration has not cheated of very human
emotions. Sally wished that she could see the eyes more closely, for
even while they were wide and laughing, sending out little sparkles of
color and light, she thought there was a hint of sadness in them, of
restlessness, as if only a part of her attention was given to the
carnival and to the children.
She was very small and slight, shorter even than little Miss Pond, who
had to look down as she talked to her. But for all her adorable
smallness she carried herself with a certain arrogance. Every movement
she made as she and Miss Pond talked together and then joined the
children was proud and graceful.
She was wearing a summer sports suit of silvery-green knitted silk,
which showed to the best advantage the miniature, Venus proportions of
her body. As she swung toward the children, nodding acquiescence to Miss
Pond's eager suggestions, little Eloise Durant, the child who had been
the "new girl" of Sally's last day in the orphanage, catapulted herself
from the huddling mass of children and impulsively seized her hand. The
swift, cordial smile with which she greeted the child and released her
hand as quickly as possible kept Sally from resenting the action. But
Eloise, still hypersensitive, knew that she had been delicately snubbed
and hung back as Gus, the barker, herded the orphans toward Jan the
giant's platform.
Sally saw the tell-tale tremble of Eloise's babyish mouth, and her heart
ached with desire to comfort the child. Outwardly Eloise had become
exactly like all the other little girls--shy, bleating when the other
little sheep bleated, obediently excited when they were excited, silent
when they were silent--but underneath she was still bewildered and
unreconciled to the death of her mother, the cheap little stock-company
actress who had evidently adored her child and been adored in return.
But someone else had seen Eloise's hurt, so unconsciously inflicted by
the lovely and arrogant lady. Betsy, the six-year-old, ran from the herd
to take Eloise's hand, with an absurd and touching little gesture of
motherliness.
"Come on, Eloise," Sally heard Betsy cry in her shrill little voice.
"Let's just you and me look at the funny people. We can see the giant
when the crowd moves on. I want to see 'Princess Lalla' more'n anything.
I want my fortune told. I want to ask her where Sally is--you
remember--Sally Ford. That man says she 'sees all, knows all,' so he
ought to know where Sally is."
"The big girls say she run away," Eloise answered, her eyes round with
awe. "They say she did something awful bad and run away with a man--"
"Sally didn't do nothing bad," Betsy retorted indignantly. "She
couldn't. She was the best 'big girl' in the Home. She play-acted for us
little kids and--oh!" She stopped with a gasp, her eyes popping as she
took in the fantastic splendor of "Princess Lalla." "Listen, Princess
Lalla," she mustered up courage to whisper coaxingly, "does it cost a
lot to get your fortune told? I've only got a nickel that the New York
lady gave me--she give every one of us a dime, but I spent a nickel for
some salt water taffy--"
Sally could hardly restrain herself from crying out: "Oh, Betsy, it's
me! Sally Ford! You don't have to spend your poor little nickel to find
me! I'm here!" But she knotted her little brown hands more tightly and
managed to smile with a princess-like indifference and weariness as she
cooed in her "Turkish" accent:
"Eeet costs noth-ing to get ze fortune told. Womens and mens must pay 25
cents to learn past, pres-ent and future, but for you--noth-ing! Come up
here by my side. I weel read the crystal."
Betsy's eyes grew rounder and rounder; her little mouth fell open in
astonishment. Then with a wild shout of joy she stumbled up the stairs
and flung her arms about Sally crying and laughing:
"You're not Princess Lalla! You're Sally Ford, play-acting! Oh, Sally,
I'm so glad I found you! Hey, kids! Kids! It's Sally Ford, play-acting!"
For a terrible moment, long enough for Gus, the barker, to jump from
Jan's platform and come toward her on a run, Sally sat frozen with
terror. She felt that Betsy's keen eyes had stripped her of her brown
make-up, of her fantastic clothes, of the protecting black veil, so that
anyone who looked at her could see that she was indeed "just Sally Ford,
play-acting."
She wanted to rise from her gilded chair and run for her life--and
David's--but she had lost all control of her muscles. Betsy was still
clinging to her, her babyish hands shaking the slender shoulders under
the green satin jacket, when Gus bounded upon the platform and took the
almost hysterical child into his arms.
"Hello, Tiddlywinks!" he sang out jovially. "Having a good time at the
carnival? Listen, kiddie! I'm going to give you a real treat! Yessir!
You know what you're going to do? Just guess!"
Sally felt the blood begin to thaw in her frozen veins. Gus was standing
by. Dear Gus! But Gus was too wise to give the child in his arms a
chance to reply. He hurried on, his voice loud and cajoling:
"I'm going to let you stand right up on the platform with the little
lady midget--her name's 'Pitty Sing'--and show all the other kids how
much bigger you are than a grown-up lady. Yessir, she's a grown-up lady
and she's not nearly as big as you. Now what do you think of that?"
Betsy was torn between her love for Sally, whom she was convinced she
had found, and her pride in being chosen to stand beside the midget. She
looked doubtfully from Sally, whose eyes beneath the black lace veil
were lowered to her tightly locked hands, to the platform opposite,
where "Pitty Sing," the midget, was stretching out a tiny hand
invitingly. The midget won, for the moment at least.
"I'm six, going on seven, and I'm a big girl," she confided to the
barker on whose shoulder she was riding in delightful conspicuousness.
The children, true to the herd instinct which had been so highly
developed in the orphanage, trooped after Gus and Betsy, even more
easily diverted than she from their pop-eyed inspection of "Princess
Lalla."
Sally heard Thelma answer another child derisively: "Aw, Betsy's off her
nut! Sure that ain't Sally! That's a Turkish princess from
Con-stan-ti-no-ple. The man said so. 'Sides, Sally's white, and the
princess is brown--"
"All right, children, right this way!" Gus was ballyhooing loudly.
"Permit me to introduce 'Pitty Sing,' the smallest and prettiest little
woman in the world. Just 29 inches tall, 29 years old and 29 pounds
heavy. Did I say 'heavy'? Excuse me, Pitty Sing! I meant 29 pounds
light! Look at her, little ladies and gents! Ain't she cute? Her parents
were just as big as your papas and mamas--"
He remembered just too late that he was talking to orphans, and his
jolly face went dark red. But he recovered quickly, glanced about his
audience, saw that Miss Pond was straying nervously toward Sally's
platform, as if halfway convinced that Betsy's childish intuition had
been correct.
"Oh, Miss Pond!" he sang out ingratiatingly. "I wonder if you'd do me
the favor to step up on the platform. I believe Betsy is scared. Yessir,
I believe she's scared half out of her skin!" He laughed, stooped to
chuck Betsy under the chin, then, with a courtly gesture, offered Miss
Pond his hand.
Sally looked on, her throat tight with fear and with tears of gratitude
toward Gus, as the barker, with a rapid fire of talk and joking, kept
his audience completely hypnotized. He jollied shy little Betsy into
taking the midget into her arms, like a baby or a big doll, and only
Sally, of all those who looked on, could guess how keenly the
artificially smiling little atom of humanity was resenting this insult
to her dignity.
He coaxed and flattered and flustered Miss Pond into standing beside
"Pitty Sing," so that the children could see what a vast difference
there was in their height. And somehow he had attracted the attention of
a carnival employe, for before he had exhausted the possibilities of the
midget as a diversion, Winfield Bybee himself came striding into the
Palace of Wonders, mounted the midget's platform and, after a moment's
whispered conference with Gus, made an announcement:
"Children, I'm old Pop Bybee; Winfield Bybee is the way it's wrote down
in the Bible. I own this carnival and I want to tell you children that
I'm proud to have you as my guests. I love children, always did! Now,
boys and girls, the Ferris wheel and the whip and the merry-go-rounds
are waiting for you."
He was interrupted by a whoop of joy from the boys, in which the girls
joined more timidly. "It won't cost you a cent. If your chaperon--" and
he turned to Miss Pond with a courtly bow--"will do me the honor to
accept these tickets, you'll all have a ride on the Ferris wheel, the
whip and the merry-go-round absolutely free. Don't crowd now, children,
but gather at the door of the tent. I thank you."
When he sprang, rather stiffly, from the platform, he offered Miss Pond
his hand, then, with her arm pressed to his side, he escorted her with
pompous courtesy to the door of the tent, where the children were
already milling about, wild with excitement.
In her terror Sally had forgotten the golden-haired woman in the green
silk sports suit. Now that the danger was passing, miraculously averted
by Gus and Pop Bybee, she started to draw a deep, trembling sigh of
relief, but it was choked in her throat by the discovery that she was
being regarded intently by the beautiful woman, who was standing beside
the midget's platform.
"Oh!" Sally thought in a new flutter of terror. "She heard Betsy call me
Sally Ford. She's going to question me. I wonder who she is. Maybe she's
a trustee's wife--oh, she's coming! She's going to talk to me--"
She rose from her high-backed, gilded chair, trying to do so without
haste. Since the performance was ended she had every right to leave the
tent, and she would do so, but she mustn't run. She mustn't give herself
away--
"Hel-lo, Enid! I couldn't believe my eyes! What in the world are you
doing so far from Park Avenue?"
Sally, forcing herself to walk with sedate leisureliness down the little
wooden steps of the platform, saw the New Yorker who had been paying her
half-mocking, half admiring attention all afternoon, stride swiftly and
gracefully across the tent toward the golden-haired woman. So he too had
witnessed Betsy's hysterical identification! She had forgotten that he
was in the tent, watching her, smiling mockingly, biding his chance to
ask her again to go to supper with him after the last show that night.
The golden-haired woman halted, and Sally, out of the corner of her
veil-protected eyes, saw an expression of startled surprise and then of
annoyance sweep over the beautiful little face. Odd that these two who
had so strangely crossed her path in one hectic day should know each
other, should meet a thousand miles away from home, in the freak show
tent of a third-rate carnival!
"Oh, hello, Van! I might ask what you're doing so far from Park Avenue,
but I suppose you're visiting your cousin, the governor. Court's here on
business and I'm amusing myself taking the orphans to the carnival. A
new role for me, isn't it--Lady Bountiful! Poor little devils! If only
they didn't want to paw me!"
Now that she was safe from being questioned Sally wanted to make her
passage to the "alley" door of the tent take as long as possible, so
that not a note of the music of that extraordinary voice should be lost
to her. She had expected the golden-haired lady's voice to be a sweet,
tinkling soprano, to match her in size, but the voice which thrilled her
with its perfection of modulation was a rich, throaty contralto, a
little arrogant, even as the speaker was, but so effortless and so
golden that Sally would have been content to listen to it, no matter
what words it might have said.
Sally paused at the door of the tent, and cast a swift glance backward
over her green-satin shoulder. "Van" was holding one of "Enid's" hands
in both of his, laughing down at her, mockingly but fondly, as if they
were the best of friends.
"Well," she said to herself, as she ran toward the dress tent, "now that
he's found _her_, he won't bother me. I wonder who 'Court' is. Her
husband? I hate rich women who play 'Lady Bountiful,'" she thought with
fierce resentment. "But--I can't hate _her_. She's too beautiful. Like a
little gold-and-green bird--a singing bird--a bird that sings
contralto."
She was resting between shows, lying on her cot in the dress tent, when
Pop Bybee came striding in.
"It's all right, honey. Don't be scared to go on with the show. That
Pond dame came cackling to me, all het up, half believing what this
Betsy baby said about you being Sally Ford, but I give her a grand song
and dance about you being the same Princess Lalla who joined the show in
New York in April. She wanted to talk to you, but I steered her off,
told her you couldn't hardly speak English and she'd just upset you.
Just stick to your lingo, child, and don't act scared. Ain't a chance in
the world the Pond dame will make another squawk."
He must have spoken to Gus, also, for the barker cut her late afternoon
and evening performances as short as possible, although by doing so he
lost many a quarter. She smiled upon him gratefully, was pleased to the
point of tears by his whispered: "Good kid! You've sure got sand!" after
the ten o'clock show when she had apparently regained her confidence and
her intuition to know "past, present and future."
As the evening wore on the heat grew more and more oppressive. The
wilted audience passed languidly from freak to freak, mopping their red
faces and tugging at tight collars. Children cried fretfully,
monotonously; women reproved them with high, heat-maddened voices; Jan,
the giant, fainted while Gus was ballyhooing him, and it took six "white
hopes" to carry him to his tent. At eleven o'clock, when Gus had just
started his last "spiel" of the evening, a terrified black man, with
eyes rolling and sweat pouring down his face, staggered into the tent,
bawling:
"Awful storm's blowin' up, folks! Look lak a cyclone! Run for yo' lives!
Tents ain't safe! Oh, mah Gawd!"
The storm broke with such sudden and devastating fury that the
performers in the Palace of Wonders tent had little time to obey the
"white hope's" frantic bellow of warning.
The terrified audience milled like stampeded cattle, choking up both
exits of the tent, that leading out into the midway, and the flap at the
back of the tent through which performers passed in and out between
shows. At each exit the fear-crazed carnival visitors were assaulted by
a dazing impact of wind and hail and rain, driven back into the tent.
Sally was fighting her way toward the "alley" exit, her frail, small
body hurling itself futilely against men who had lost all thought of
chivalry, knew only that death threatened.
The region was notorious for its cyclones, and the horror of such a
calamity was stamped on every pallid face. Children screamed; women
shrilled for help, called frantically for their offspring separated from
them in that mad rush for the exits.
Sally had almost won to the alley exit when she remembered "Pitty Sing,"
the midget, tiny, helpless Miss Tanner, who was paying her to carry her
to and from the tent, who must even now be cowering in her baby-chair,
unable even to reach the ground without assistance.
It was not quite so hard to push her way back into the center of the
tent; crazed men and women offered little resistance to anyone who was
so foolish as to tempt death under a collapsed tent.
She had almost reached the midget's platform when she suddenly felt
herself lifted into a pair of strong arms, swung high above the heads of
the last of the crowd that was battling its way to the exits. Her cry
was instinctive, unreasoning, direct from her heart: "David! Oh, David!"
A mocking laugh answered her and she squirmed in the man's arms so that
she could see his face. It was not David at all, but the man whom "Enid"
had called "Van." His face was laughing, gay, mocking, untouched by the
shameful pallor of fear; exultant, rather, in the excitement of the
storm. His dark eyes were wide, shining even through the fitful darkness
made by the flickering of the crazily swinging gas jets.
"Isn't it glorious?" he challenged her, above the uproar of wind, rain,
hail and the frightened animal sounds of human beings in fear of death.
"I've got to find the midget--Pitty Sing!" she shouted, struggling
frantically to release herself.
"The charming barker has rescued her," Van shouted. "I was afraid some
officious ass had cheated me of the pleasure of rescuing you. I've
waited all day--"
But his sentence was broken in two by the long-threatened collapse of
the tent. A center-pole struck him a glancing blow, knocking him flat,
and Sally with him.
For what seemed like hours of nightmare she struggled to release herself
from the steel-like clasp of his arms and the smothering embrace of the
rain-sodden canvas. To add to the horror, rain fell heavily upon the
canvas that held them pinned helplessly to the earth; hail pelted her
flesh bitingly even through the dubious protection of the canvas; and
every moment they were in mortal danger of being trampled to death by
the feet of fleeing carnival visitors, who had been clear of the tent
when it had collapsed.
"Don't--struggle," came that mocking voice, panting a little with the
effort of speaking under the smothering caul of canvas. "Lie--still.
I'll hold up--the canvas--so you--can breathe. Shield your face--with
your--arms. Sorry--I muffed--the role--of rescuer--of damsels--in
distress."
"Oh, hush!" Sally cried angrily, but doing her best to obey him. She
crooked an arm over her face, so that the hail no longer punished it.
And she relaxed as much as possible, her head on Van's shoulder, her
feet pushing futilely at the sodden mass of canvas that weighted them
down.
"Better?" he asked casually, no fear at all in his voice, and only a
mocking sort of anxiety. "We'll be safe enough here until the tent is
raised, unless someone steps on us. And by this time your charming
employer, the redoubtable Pop Bybee, has of course assembled his
roustabouts to raise the tent in the expectation of finding buried
treasure--ostrich men, midgets, and Turkish harem girls who read
crystals."
"Aren't you ever serious? Aren't you frightened?" Sally gasped.
"Serious? Well, hardly ever!" the man chuckled. "Frightened? Frequently!
But I am so appreciative of this opportunity to be alone with you that I
could hardly quibble with fate to the extent of being frightened at the
means which accomplished it."
"Oh, I wonder what's happened to--to everybody!" Sally began to shiver
with sobs.
"To--David?" Van's mocking voice came strangely out of the darkness.
"Lucky David, wherever he is now, that your first thought should go to
him. David and Sally! How do you like 'play-acting,' Sally Ford?"