"Listen!" Sally whispered, her fingers closing tensely over David's arm.
"Gus, ballyhooing The Palace of Wonders. I wonder if he'll remember not
to spiel about 'Princess Lalla.'"
They could see him, a small figure from that distance, looking like a
Jack-in-the-box as he waved his arms and thundered the dear, familiar
phrases which Sally would never forget if she lived to be a hundred.
She was about to run back down the hill, but David strode after her and
put his arms about her comfortingly. "Sally, honey, we haven't time!
Throw them a kiss from here, and then we've got to hurry away."
She broke from his embrace and flung her arms out in a passionate
gesture of love and farewell. "Goodby, Carnival. Thank you for
sheltering David and me! Goodby, Pop Bybee and Mrs. Bybee! Goodby, Gus!
Goodby, Jan. Goodby, Noko! Goodby, Boffo! And Babe! Goodby, dancing
girls! I hope you all land on Broadway with Ziegfeld! Oh, goodby, Pitty
Sing, dear little Betty! Goodby, goodby!" Then she flung herself upon
David's breast and held him tight with all the strength in her thin
young arms. "I've only got you now, David! Oh, David, what is going to
become of us? Do you really love me, darling?"
She strained away from him, to search his beloved face as well as the
darkness of the night would permit. Faintly she could see the tremble of
his tender, deeply carved lips, so dearly boyish. His eyes looked big
and black in the night, but there was a gleam of such divine light in
them that her fingers crept up his face tremblingly and closed his
eyelids, for she suddenly felt abashed, unworthy of his love.
"I love you with every cell in my body, every thought in my mind and
every beat of my heart," David answered huskily. "And now let's travel,
honey. I don't know where we're going, but we've got to put as much
distance as possible between us and this town before morning."
But before they set off again he kissed her, not one of the long ardent
kisses that made her dizzy and frightened even as they exalted her, but
a shy, sweet touching of his lips to her forehead. It was as if he were
telling her, wordlessly, that she would be utterly safe with him through
the long, dark hours ahead of them.
They did not talk much as they walked steadily along the dirt roads,
choosing them in preference to the frequented paved highway, for David
cautioned her to save her breath for the all-important task of covering
many miles before daybreak. Neither of them had any idea of the
geography of this state to which the carnival had brought them, but they
felt that it mattered little. David, country-bred, had an instinct for
direction. He had chosen to turn toward the east, and Sally trotted
along by his side, supremely confident that he would lead her out of
danger.
"One o'clock, darling," he announced at last, when Sally was so tired
that she could hardly put one foot before the other. "We'll rest awhile
and then plod along. There's a farmhouse near. See the cows lined up by
the fence? We'll find a well and have a drink."
A three-quarters moon rode high in the sky but its light was
intermittently obscured by ragged, scuddling clouds. When they had had
their drink of ice-cold cistern water David made a pillow of his coat
which he had been carrying over his arm, and forced Sally to lie down
for awhile in the soft loam of a recently ploughed field.
He sat at a little distance from her, not touching her, his knees drawn
up and clasped by his strong, tanned hands, but his head was thrown back
and his eyes brooded upon the cloud-disturbed beauty of the night sky.
"Does your shoulder hurt, darling?" Sally asked anxiously.
"No," he answered, without looking at her. "It's all healed. Just a
flesh wound, you know."
The tone of his voice silenced her. She knew he was brooding over their
future, puzzling his young head as to what he was to do with her, and
she lay very still, humble before his masculinity.
"I've been thinking, Sally," he said at last, gently. "First, we'll get
married in the morning, or as soon as we find a county seat, and then--"
"But David." Sally sat up, her heart pounding with joy but her mind
unexpectedly clear and logical, "we mustn't, darling. You've got to
finish college, somehow, somewhere--I can't bear to be a burden upon
you! You're so young, so young!"
"I'm going to take care of you," David answered steadily. "We love each
other and I think we always will. My father married when he was
nineteen, and I'm nearly twenty-one--and big for my age," he added,
grinning at her. "We can't go on like this, honey. Mrs. Stone would have
a right to think the worst of us--of you--if we were not married when
she catches up with us. She would be justified in thinking that Clem
Carson told the truth to the police when he charged us with--with
immorality. Don't you see, darling, that we just _must_ be married now?"
"Then I'll run away by myself!" Sally flashed at him, springing to her
feet. "I'm not going to have you forced into marriage when you're not
old enough and not really ready for it. You'd hate me for being a drag
on you--"
"Sally!" David was on his feet now and his stern voice checked her
before she had run a dozen steps away from him. "Come here!"
She crept into his arms, and laid her head against his chest, so that
his heart beat strongly and steadily just beneath her ear.
"Listen, Sally, beloved," he urged softly. "I want to marry you more
than anything in the world. It might have been better if we had met and
fallen in love when we were both older, but fate took care of that for
us, and I'm only proud and happy to be able to ask you now to marry me.
I'll not make much money at first, maybe, but neither of us has been
used to a great deal, and I promise you now that I'll not fail you in
love and loyalty. I've never cared for any other girl and I never will.
Let's not try to look too far ahead. We're young and strong and in love.
Isn't that enough, sweet?"
"Yes," she agreed, nodding her head against his breast.
"Then let's travel," he laughed jubilantly. "This is our wedding day,
Sally! Think of it, sweet! Our wedding day!"
As they plodded hand in hand through the long hours before dawn Sally
thought of nothing else. She was glad that walking made talking a waste
of energy, for she wanted to think and feel and search her heart and
soul for treasure to lavish upon the boy-man she was to marry.
Marriage! The word made her feel shivery and solemn and more than a
little frightened, but when a shudder of fear made her hand twitch in
David's, the firm, warm pressure of his fingers reassured her. She
resolutely forced her mind away from the mysteries that lay ahead of
her, mysteries at which Mrs. Stone had hinted in that last, embarrassing
lecture she had delivered to a cowering, shamefaced Sally the day Clem
Carson had taken her to the farm. Whatever lay before her, David would
be with her, gentle, sweet, infinitely tender--
"I'll be Mrs. David Nash," she told herself childishly. "I'll be David's
wife. I'll have David for my family, and maybe--some day--there'll be a
baby David, with hair like gold in the sun--"
"You'll have to tell a fib about your age, honey," David interrupted her
thoughts, his voice grave and, it seemed to her, a little embarrassed.
Maybe David, too, was frightened a bit, just as she was! That made it
easier. She was suddenly jubilantly glad that he was not wise and
sophisticated and very much older than she, like Arthur Van Horne, for
instance.
"I'll have to say I'm eighteen, won't I?" she laughed. "Do I look
eighteen, David? Now that most girls have bobbed hair, my long hair,
ought to make me look very old and dignified. I _do_ look eighteen,
don't I, David?"
"Oh, Sally!" David stopped abruptly and held her close to him,
pityingly. "You look the adorable baby that you are! I pray to God that
marrying me won't make you old before your time! Why, honey-child, you
haven't had any girlhood at all, or childhood either! You should have
dozens of sweethearts before you marry--go to theaters and parties and
dances for years and years yet, before you settle down."
"Then I shan't settle down," Sally laughed shakily. "I'll be a giddy
flapper, if you'd rather! Ah, no, David! I want to be a good wife to
you! But we won't get old and serious. We'll work together and play
together and study together and hobo all over the country together when
we feel like it. I think we make good hoboes, don't you?"
"Not at this rate," David laughed, relieved. "I'm not going to kiss you
a single other time before dawn, or we'll never get anywhere. And don't
you try to vamp me, you little witch!"
He did not quite keep his promise, for when Sally became so tired about
four o'clock in the morning that she could walk no further, he picked
her up in his big-muscled young arms, and strode proudly into the dawn
with her, and of course the best antidote for fatigue and sleepiness was
an occasional kiss on her drooping eyelids or upon her babyishly lax,
pink little mouth.
When the sun came up they were a little shy with each other, inclined to
talk rapidly about trivial things.
"Canfield--two miles," David read from a sign post at a cross-roads.
"I'm going to ask that truck driver the name of the nearest county seat,
and how to get there."
Sally watched him proudly as he ran swiftly, apparently not at all
fatigued after seven hours of hiking, to hail a dairy truck approaching
along the state highway. The sun was in his tousled chestnut hair,
turning it into gold, and the bigness and splendid beauty of his body
thrilled her to sudden tears of joy that he was hers--hers. Her heart
offered up a prayer: "Please God, don't let anything happen so that we
can't be married today! Please!"
"Canfield is a county seat," David shouted exultantly before his long
strides had brought him back to Sally. "The driver of the milk truck
guessed why I wanted to know," he added in a lower voice, as he came
abreast of her and took her hands to swing them triumphantly. "He says
we crossed the state line about ten miles back and that the marriage
laws are very easy on elopers here. In some states you have to establish
a legal residence before you can be married, but there'll be no trouble
like that here. Elopers from two or three bordering states come here to
get married, he says. We're in luck, sweetheart."
"You didn't tell him our names?" Sally asked anxiously. "Mrs. Stone will
have sent out a warning--"
"I'm not quite such an idiot," David laughed, "even if I am crazy in
love. Now the next problem is breakfast. I suppose a farmhouse will be
the best bet. It wouldn't be safe for us to hang around Canfield for
three or four hours, waiting for the marriage license bureau to open.
We're going to be married, darling, before the law has a chance to lay
its hands on us."
They trudged along the state highway, miraculously revived by hope that
all their troubles would soon be over, their eyes searching eagerly for
a farmhouse. And just over the rise of a low hill they found it--a
tenant farmer's unpainted shack, from whose chimney rose a straight
column of blue smoke.
They found the family at breakfast--the wife a slim, pretty,
discontented-looking girl only a few years older than Sally; the
husband, thick, short, dark and dour, at least a dozen years older than
his wife; and a tow-headed baby boy of three.
The kitchen was an unpainted and unpapered lean-to of rough,
weather-darkened pine. But Sally and David had eyes only for the tall
stack of buckwheat cakes, the platter of roughly cut, badly fried "side
meat," the huge graniteware coffee pot set on a chipped plate in the
center of the table. "Breakfast?" the dour tenant-farmer grunted, in
answer to David's question. "Reckon so, if you can eat what we got.
It'll cost you 50 cents a piece. I don't work from sun-up to sun-down to
feed tramps."
"Oh, Jim!" the wife protested, flushing. "Cakes and coffee ain't worth
50 cents. I might run down to the big house and get some eggs and
cream--" she added uncertainly, her distressed brown eyes flickering
from Sally and David in the doorway to her scowling husband.
"We'll be delighted with the buckwheat cakes and bacon and coffee, and
not think a dollar too much for our breakfast," David cut in, smiling
placatingly upon the farmer. "We're farmers ourselves, and we're used to
farm ways. How are crops around here, sir?"
"My name's Buckner," the dour farmer answered grudgingly. "I'll bring in
a couple of chairs. Millie, you'd better fill up this here syrup pitcher
and you might open a jar of them damson preserves."
"And I'll beat up some more hot cake batter," Millie Buckner fluttered
happily. "It won't take me a minute."
Sally and David washed their hands and faces at the pump outside the
kitchen door, drying them on a fresh roller towel that Jim Buckner
brought them.
"Run away to get married, have you?" the farmer asked in an almost
pleasant voice, as he led the way to the newly set table.
"Yes," David answered simply. "We walked all night and we're rather
tired, but we thought there was no use in going in to Canfield until
pretty near nine o'clock."
"I guess Millie can fix up a bed so the little lady can snatch a nap
'tween now and then," Buckner offered. "Pitch in, folks! it ain't much,
but you're welcome. Farmer, eh?" and his narrow eyes measured David's
splendid young body thoughtfully. "Aim to locate around here? Old man
Webster, the man I rent this patch of ground from, is needing hands bad.
He's got a shack over the hill that he'd likely fix up for you if you
ain't got anything better in mind. Not quite as nice as this house--we
got three rooms, counting this lean-to, and the shack I'm referrin' to
is only one room and a lean-to, but the little lady could fix it up real
pretty if she's got a knack that way, like Millie here has."
Sally almost choked on her mouthful of buckwheat cake. Were all her
dreams of a home to come to this--or worse than this? One room and a
lean-to! She felt suddenly ill and was swaying in her chair when David's
firm, big hand closed over hers that lay laxly on the table.
"Thanks, Mr. Buckner," she heard David's voice faintly as from a great
distance. "That's mighty nice of you, but Sally and I have other plans."
Other plans? Sally smiled at him tremulously, adoringly, knowing full
well that he had no plans at all beyond the all-important marriage
ceremony. But after breakfast she lay down on the bed that Millie
Buckner hastily "straightened" and drifted off to sleep, as happy as if
her future were blue-printed and insured against poverty. For no matter
what might be in store for her, there would always be David--
They left the tenant farmer's shack at half past eight o'clock, Millie
and Jim Buckner and the baby waving them goodby. Buckner, ashamed of his
ungraciousness, had refused to take the dollar, but David had wrapped
the baby's small sticky fingers about the folded bill.
"Shall we go up the hill and see 'Old Man' Webster?" David asked gravely
when they were in the lane leading to the highway.
"Let's" agreed Sally valiantly.
"You'd really be willing to live--like that?" David marveled, his head
jerking toward the dreary little shack they were leaving behind them.
"If--if you were with me, it wouldn't matter," Sally answered seriously.
"You'll never have to!" David exulted, sweeping her to his breast and
kissing her regardless of the fact that the Buckners were still watching
them. "I promise you it will never be as bad as that, honey. But maybe
Jim Buckner promised Millie the same thing," he added in a troubled,
uncertain voice.
"I'll never be sorry," Sally promised huskily.
They reached Canfield a few minutes after nine and had no difficulty in
finding the county court house, for its grounds formed the "square"
which was the hub of the small town. An old man pottering about the
tobacco-stained halls with a mop and pail directed them to the marriage
license bureau, without waiting for David to frame his embarrassed
question.
The clerk, a pale, very thin young man, whose weak eyes were enlarged by
thick-lensed glasses, thrust a printed form through the wicket of his
cage, and went on with his work upon a big ledger, having apparently not
the slightest interest in foolish young couples who wanted to commit
matrimony.
"Answer all the questions," the clerk mumbled, without looking up.
"Table in the corner over there. Pen and ink."
Sally and David were laughing helplessly by the time they had taken
seats at the pine table in the corner. "Proving you're never as
important as you think you are," David chuckled. "Let's see. 'Place of
residence?' I suppose we'll have to put Capital City. But that chap
certainly doesn't give a continental who we are or where we're from.
We're all in the day's work with him, thank heaven. Don't forget to put
your age at eighteen, darling."
When they presented their filled-in and signed application for a
marriage license, the clerk accepted it with supreme indifference,
glancing at it and drew a stack of marriage license blanks toward him.
As he began to write in the names, however, he frowned thoughtfully,
then peered through the bars of his cage at the blushing, frightened
couple.
"Your names sound awfully familiar to me," he puzzled. "Where you from?
Capital City? Say, you're the kids that got into a row with a farmer and
busted his leg, ain't you?"
Sally pressed close to David, her hands locking tightly over his arm,
but David, as if he did not understand her signal, answered the clerk in
a steady voice: "Yes, we are."
"I read all about you in the papers," the clerk went on in a strangely
friendly voice. "I reckon your story made a deep impression on me
because I was raised in an orphans' home myself and ran away when I was
fourteen. I hoped at the time that you kids would make a clean get-away.
I see the young lady's had a couple of birthdays in the last month," he
grinned and winked. "Eighteen now, eh?"
"Yes," Sally quavered and then laughed, the lid of her right eye
fluttering slowly down until the two fringes of black lashes met and
entangled.
The clerk's pen scratched busily. "All right, youngsters. Here you are.
Justice of the peace wedding?"
"We'd rather be married by a minister," David answered as he laid a $20
bill under the wicket and reached for the marriage license.
"That's easy," the clerk assured him heartily. "Like every county seat,
Canfield's got her 'marrying parson.' Name of Greer. He's building a new
church out of the fees that the eloping couples pay him. Lives on
Chestnut street. White church and parsonage. Five blocks up Main street
and turn to your right, then walk a block and a half. You can't miss it.
And good luck, kids. You'll need lots of it."
David thrust a hand beneath the wicket and the two young men shook
hands, David flushed and embarrassed but smiling, the clerk grinning
good-naturedly.
"Hey, don't forget your change," their new friend called as David and
Sally were turning away. "Marriage licenses in this state cost only
$1.50. If you've got any spare change, give it to Parson Greer."
"Oh, he was sweet!" Sally cried, between laughter and tears, as they
walked out of the courthouse. "I thought I would faint when he asked us
that awful question. But everything's all right now."
"We're as good as married," David assured her triumphantly, slapping his
breast pocket and cocking his head to listen to the crackling of the
marriage license. "Five blocks up Main street. Up must mean north--"
Within five minutes they were awaiting an answer to their ring at the
door of the little white parsonage half hidden behind the rather shabby
white frame building of the church.
A stout, rosy-cheeked, white-haired old lady opened the door and beamed
upon them. "You're looking for the 'marrying parson,' aren't you?" she
chuckled. "Well, now, it's a shame, children, but you'll have to wait
quite a spell for him. He's conducting a funeral at the home of one of
our parishioners, and won't be back until about half past eleven. I'm
Mrs. Greer. Won't you come in and wait?"
Sally and David consulted each other with troubled, disappointed eyes.
Sally wanted to cry out to David that she was afraid to wait two hours,
afraid to wait even half an hour, but with Mrs. Greer beaming
expectantly upon them she did not dare.
"Thank you, Mrs. Greer," David answered, his hand tightening warningly
upon Sally's. "We'll wait."
As they followed Mrs. Greer into the stuffy, over-furnished little
parlor, he managed to whisper reassuringly in Sally's ear: "Just two
hours, darling. Nothing can happen."
But Sally was shaking with fright--