"Mr. David Nash!"
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 embarrassment, 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 undershirt.
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
shirt 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.
But all the time her eyes were darting about on their quest for David.
She spotted him at last, near the door of the ballroom, moodily
listening to whatever it was that Courtney Barr was saying in his most
unctuous, weighty manner.
"Please--I'll be back soon!" Sally gasped to her amazed partner, and
broke from his grasp.
She did not in the least care that curious glances and uplifted brows
followed her fleet progress across the crowded ballroom floor. Her whole
attention was given to David, David who looked ill-at-ease and
wretched--
"Aren't you going to dance with me?" she cried as soon as she reached
him and her adopted father. "You mustn't let Father monopolize you.
Come, before the music stops."
Unsmiling, David took her into his arms, gingerly, as if he were afraid
of crushing the precious dress.
"Do you remember the other time we danced together, David?" she
whispered, her voice tender with memories. "In the Carsons' parlor. No
one else would dance with me and Pearl could have slain me because you
did. Remember?"
David nodded, held her just a trifle closer, but his face was as grim
and unhappy as ever. She tucked her head against his broad breast and
closed her eyes so that he could not see her tears. When the music
stopped abruptly, she seized his hand, drew him urgently.
"We've got to go somewhere to talk, David. I can't stand--this."
He let her lead him down three flights of the magnificent circular
marble staircase, and because he was so silent she thought miserably
that it might be hurting him that she was so much at home in this vast,
splendid house.
"Miss Rice's office!" she cried, after he had darted about in an
unsuccessful effort to find a secluded nook not already occupied by
truant couples.
When the door had closed upon them, she faced him, her breath catching
on a little gasp of anticipation. But his arms stayed rigidly at his
side.
"It was in this very room, David," she began eagerly, "that I fought the
battle with Mother and won. I made her keep her promise to me to invite
you to my coming-out ball. She promised me two and a half years ago,
promised so I would promise her not to write to you. But I wrote you
every week, sometimes oftener, and I'm still writing every week, though
I can't mail the letters. Now I can! Now I can! Do you realize I'm of
age, David? I'm eighteen and a half, and I'm 'out.' Isn't that funny?
I'm officially 'out' now, and I can do as I please."
Her voice dragged a little at the end, for he was looking at her as if
she were a stranger, or as if he were trying to make her feel like a
stranger to him. With a moan, she lifted her arms and crept so close to
him that she could lay her head against his breast. "Aren't you--going
to kiss me, David? I've waited so long, so long--"
She felt him stiffen, then his hands came up slowly and fastened upon
hers. But it was only to remove her hands from his shoulders--
"You must forget me, Sally, or remember me only when you remember Sally
Ford and Pitty Sing and Jan and Pop Bybee. We all belong together in
your memory, and none of us belongs in Sally Barr's life." His voice was
level, heavy, not the young, tender, musical voice that had made love to
her during the carnival days.
She took a backward step, a little drunkenly, and the face she lifted
bravely for whatever blow he was going to deal her was pinched and
white, the eyes blue-black with pain. "Don't you love me any more,
David?"
"I'm a poor man and I'm not a fortune-hunter," David answered grimly.
"I--don't know Sally Barr."
She shrank from him then, backward, step by step, so stricken, so
white-faced, that the boy clenched his hands in agony.
They were still staring at each other when the door opened, and an
almost forgotten but now shockingly familiar voice sang out
nonchalantly:
"Bobby Proctor told me I'd find you here, Sally."
It was Arthur Van Horne, whom she had not seen since the last day of the
carnival in Capital City.
"Please don't go, David!" Sally implored, but he mistook her distress,
occasioned by Arthur Van Home's entirely unexpected appearance, for a
plea for a longer interview which he knew would only cause them both
pain.
He shook his head dumbly and strode to the door. He paused there a
moment to bow jerkily first toward Sally, then toward Van Horne, who was
watching the scene with amused, cynical eyes.
Pride mercifully came to Sally's aid then; she closed her lips firmly
over the question she had been about to fling at David with desperate
urgency. She even managed to wave her hand with what she hoped was airy
indifference as David opened the door.
"So!" Van Horne chuckled when the door had closed softly. "It's still
Sally and David, isn't it? I'm glad I was vouchsafed a glimpse of this
paragon. Astonishingly good-looking in a Norse Viking sort of way, but
rather a bull in a China shop here, isn't he? But I presume that is why
Enid fondly hoped when she allowed him to come. I gather that she did
invite him? A very clever woman, Enid. I've always said so."
Sally's teeth closed hurtingly over her lower lip, but she said nothing.
The pain and horror of David's uncompromising rebuff were still too
great to permit room in her heart for fear of Van Horne. Of course he
had recognized her at once, had undoubtedly recognized her from her
pictures in the papers, but what did it matter now? David was
gone--gone--He had not even kissed her--
"Still afraid of me, Sally?" Van Horne laughed, as her eyes remained
fixed on his face in a blind, unseeing stare.
"Afraid of you?" Sally echoed, her voice struggling strangely through
pain. "Oh, you mean--?" She tried to collect her wits, to push aside the
incredible fact of David's desertion, so that she could concentrate on
Van Horne and the frightening significance of his presence here coupled
with his knowledge of her past.
"Dear little Sally!" Van Horne said tenderly, and Sally clenched her
fist to strike him for using the words which had been heavenly sweet
when David had uttered them so long ago. "I told you the last time I saw
you that you had not seen the last of Arthur Van Horne. I meant it, but
I give you my word I hardly expected to find you _here_! I spent the
deuce of a lot of time and money trying to trace you after you left the
carnival. Old Bybee finally told me that you'd run away and had probably
married your David. So I took my broken heart to China, Japan, Egypt and
God knows where. And now like the chap who sought for the Holy Grail, I
find you at home waiting for me."
"I wasn't waiting for you," Sally contradicted him indignantly. "I was
waiting for David and he's just told me that he doesn't want me. I hoped
I'd never see you again!"
"Why, Sally, Sally!" Van Horne chided her, his black eyes full of
mocking humor. "Don't you realize that I'm the oldest friend you have in
this new life of yours? I really haven't got used to the idea yet of
your being Enid Barr's daughter. Of course I knew there was something
mysterious about her overweening interest in 'Princess Lalla,' but this
thick old bean of mine wasn't functioning very well in those days. My
heart was too full of that same lovely little crystal-gazer. But when I
read the rather masterly bit of fiction in the papers, the story which
good old asinine Courtney Barr gave out as to your parentage and his
wardship which he had supplanted by a legal adoption, the old bean began
to click again, and I can assure you I got a great deal of quiet
enjoyment out of the thing. Fancy the impeccable Enid Barr's having--"
"Oh, stop" Sally commanded him, flaming with anger. "Don't dare say a
word against my mother--I mean, against Enid--"
"Against your mother," Van Horne corrected her serenely. "Of course I
haven't told anyone, Sally, and I don't really see why I should,
if--Listen, child: don't you think we ought to have a long, comfortable
talk about--old times? We're likely to be interrupted here any minute by
a chaperon--or by your mother or by a couple of young idiots seeking a
quiet place to 'neck' in. Slip out of the house when the show's
over--the servants' entrance will be better--and we'll go for a drive
through the park."
"I shall do no such thing," Sally repudiated the suggestion hotly. "I'm
going back to the ballroom now. Please don't come with me."
When she arrived, breathless, at the door of the ballroom, she bumped
into Enid, whose face was white and anxious and suddenly almost old.
"Darling, _where_ have you been?" her mother whispered fiercely. "I've
had Courtney and Randall and two of the footmen looking for you. This is
_your_ party, you know. You have other guests besides David Nash. I knew
it was a mistake to ask him--"
"Where is he, Mother?" Sally interrupted rudely. "I've been with someone
else most of the time." She could not bring herself yet to mention Van
Horne's name to her mother, for fear Enid would notice that something
was sadly amiss.
"I haven't seen him," Enid protested. "But run along now and dance. It's
the last dance before supper. Remember that Grant Proctor is taking you
down. Do be sweet to him, Sally."
"She would like for me to marry Grant Proctor," Sally reflected dully,
as she obediently let herself be drawn into the dance by an ardent-eyed
young man whose name she could not remember. "She wants me to marry
Grant Proctor, when I'm already half-married to David. But David doesn't
want me! Oh, David!"
Just before supper was announced she slipped away to her own rooms, to
cry the hot tears that were pressing against her eyeballs. And on her
dressing table she found a note, undoubtedly placed there by her own
maid. Her cold, shaking fingers had difficulty in opening it, for she
knew at once that it was from David.
"Dear little Sally," she read, and the tears gushed then. "Forgive me
for bolting like this, but I couldn't stand it any longer. You know I
love you, that 'I'll be loving you always,' but you must also know that
Sally Barr cannot marry David Nash, and that anything less would be too
terrible for both of us. You must be wondering why I came. I wanted to
see for myself that you are happy, that your mother is good to you. And,
of course, I wanted to see you again, wanted to see if there was
anything of my Sally in this beautiful Sally Barr that the papers are
making so much of.
"I think it has made it harder for me to find that underneath the new
surface you are still Sally Ford. But they'll change the core of you
almost as rapidly as they have remade the surface of you into a society
beauty. And after you're changed all through you'll be glad I went away.
I'll carry my own Sally in my heart always, and the new Sally Barr will
fall in love with the splendid young son of some old family, marry him
and make her mother very happy. She would never forgive us, Sally, if I
took you away and made you live on what I can earn as a farmer, and she
would be right not to forgive. I would not forgive myself, and after
awhile you'd be unhappy, too, remembering all that you had lost,
including a mother who adores you. Goodby, Sally. David."
She was so quiet, so white at supper that Grant Proctor, who was already
in love with her, begged her to let him give her a drink from his pocket
flask, but she refused, scarcely knowing what he had said to her. Once
she caught her mother's eyes, and shivered at the anxiety and reproach
in them.
Suddenly a fierce resentment against Enid Barr rose and beat sickeningly
in her blood. If she had not interfered, she and David would have been
married long ago. They would have been happy in poverty, would have
struggled side by side to banish poverty, might even have had a tiny
David and Sally of their own by this time. And now David was irrevocably
gone, so that Enid Barr might keep her daughter. Sally wanted to nurse
her anger against her mother, but it was impossible to do so, for she
loved her.
When the jazz orchestra was hilariously summoning the debutantes to the
dance floor again Arthur Van Horne claimed Sally over the protests of
the half dozen younger men who were good-naturedly wrangling for the
honor.
"You're going to meet me after this foolish, delightful show is over,
aren't you? Of course you are!" he smiled down upon her as he led her
out upon the floor.
Sally looked up at him wearily and saw that there was more than
amusement and gallantry in his narrowed, smiling black eyes. There was
menace, which he did not try to conceal, wanted her to see--
"You do love your mother, don't you?" he smiled significantly. "Maybe
you'll learn to love Van a little, too. It would be--very wise."
It was half past four o'clock when the tireless debutantes were willing
to call it a night. Sally braved the thing out, but her face was wan as
she listened to the last compliments on the success of the party which
had officially launched her into the circles of society to which her
mother belonged by the divine right of inheritance and immense wealth.
"We'll talk it all over tomorrow, sweetheart," Enid said pityingly. "You
run along to bed now. I've got to give a few instructions to Randall.
And you'd better stay in bed all day, or until tea time anyway. You were
marvelous tonight, darling. So beautiful, so sweet. These wild young
flappers--but run along, daughter beloved. You look as if you might
faint with fatigue. Have Ernestine bring you some hot milk."
It was ridiculously easy for Sally to slip out of the house, using the
servants' entrance, as Van Horne had suggested. She found him waiting
for her and submitted wearily to being led to where his car was parked,
a block away.
"What do you want, Van?" she asked abruptly, when the car turned into
Central Park from Fifth Avenue at Eighty-fourth street, the wheels
crunching the glazed crust of new snow.
"To talk with you and hold your hand and possibly kiss you--oh, very
possibly!" Van Horne laughed at her, reaching for her hand.
"What did you mean when you said it would be 'very wise' for me to love
you a little?" she persisted, too tired to be diplomatic. But of course
she knew. He held her mother's security and happiness in the hollow of
his hand. That he could destroy her own social career if he wished did
not occur to her, for she had not yet learned to care about it, to prize
it. But Enid must be protected at all costs.
"I think you know," Van Horne shrugged. "But why put it into words? Some
things are much nicer unsaid, if they are distinctly understood.
Now--will you kiss me, Sally? I've waited a long time, sweet child, and
I'm naturally not a patient man."
"Not tonight," Sally said in a low, flat voice, shrinking into her own
corner of the seat. "Please turn at One Hundred and Tenth street and
take me back home, Van. I'm utterly tired."
Van obeyed cheerfully, exultant over her indirect promise. Sally was
creeping exhaustedly up the stairs to her room, her mother, still
dressed in her formal ball gown, came hurrying frantically down to meet
her.
"Darling, where have you been? I've been crazy with worry! How _could_
you go out and meet that Nash boy so brazenly? Tonight of all nights!"
"It wasn't David, Mother," Sally said in a dead-tired voice. "It was
Arthur Van Horne. He--knows--all about me. He's known all along."
Five weeks later--it was in early January, just before the annual
scurrying of self-coddling society folk from the rigors of a New York
winter to the sunshine of Palm Beach and Nassau--Sally Barr, "one of the
season's most beautiful debutantes," as the society editors called her,
sat at a table for six in one of New York's most exclusive night clubs.
She was thankful for the fact that an inhumanly flexible male dancer was
doing his most incredible tricks for the amusement of the club's
patrons, for watching him gave her an opportunity to think, an excuse
for not chattering brightly as debutantes were expected to do.
Grant Proctor, whom Enid had hoped she would marry, sat opposite her,
Arthur Van Horne on her right. Beside Grant, twittering and giggling,
was Claire Bainbridge, whose engagement to the heir of the Proctor
millions would be announced from Palm Beach.
And yet Sally was conscious that Grant's nice, leaf-brown eyes followed
her with a frustrated, doglike devotion whenever she was near him. He
had told her that he loved her, and Sally, terribly anxious to please
her mother and to secure Enid Barr's safety from scandal, had been ready
to listen to his proposal of marriage. Since David was lost to her, it
did not much matter whom she married.
"But if he asks me to marry him, Mother, I'll have to tell him the truth
about my birth," Sally had told Enid.
Now, with her wistful eyes apparently watching the agile dancer, she
remembered Enid's horrified protest. "You can't tell him, Sally! He
wouldn't marry you if he knew. His parents wouldn't let him. Promise me
you won't tell, darling!"
And so Sally had not told him, but when he did ask her to marry him she
refused him. His as yet unannounced engagement to Claire Bainbridge had
followed swiftly, but his eyes were still pathetically true to Sally.
She shifted her position a trifle, so that she could observe Arthur Van
Horne out of the corner of her eye. Not that she wanted to see him! She
had been forced to see so much of him since the night of her debut party
that the very sound of his mocking, drawling voice was obnoxious to her.
She would never forget her mother's terror, her abject pleading and
tears.
"Don't antagonize him, darling!" Enid had begged. "He can ruin us, ruin
us! Be nice to him, Sally! If--if he was in love with you during those
awful carnival days, maybe--" She had hesitated, ashamed to put her hope
into words. "Van is really a rather wonderful man, you know, darling.
One of the most eligible bachelors in New York society. Old family, no
mother or father to dictate to him, a tremendous fortune. Of course,
he's cynical and blase, and rather more experienced than I'd like,
but--just be nice to him, darling. Maybe--"
That shamefaced "maybe" of Enid's had kept thrusting itself upon Sally's
rebellious attention ever since. Enid, more frightened of Van's power
over her than she would admit, even to Sally, threw the two together on
every possible occasion. After Grant Proctor had retreated from the
field, smarting under his refusal by Sally, Enid had almost feverishly
concentrated on Van Horne. Sally had stubbornly insisted to her mother
that she would not marry any man whom she could not tell the truth about
her illegitimacy, and Enid had just as stubbornly refused to consider
the possibility of Sally's telling.
"If Van really knows," she had told Sally in desperation, "that is one
too many. You could not possibly harm any man by marrying him without
telling. You're _our_ daughter now--the legally adopted daughter of Mr.
and Mrs. Courtney Barr. That is all that matters."
"What matters to me," Sally had insisted wearily, "is that no man that
you would like for me to marry would have me if he knew. I can't cheat.
Of course I don't have to marry."
"Of course not," Enid had agreed with assumed gayety. "But since Van
does know--Of course, since he already knows, if you married him it
would be as much to his interest to forget it and protect me--us--as it
is ours. But I want you to be happy, darling."
Sally, her little round chin supported on her laced fingers, her eyes
brooding upon the dancer whom she did not see, reflected with an
unchildlike bitterness that there was no question now of her being
happy. Happiness lay behind her; she had almost grasped it, had been
"half-married" to a man she loved. David! His name flashed through her
heart like the thrust of a red-hot lancet.
"Dance, Sally? Or do you prefer to go on dreaming?" Van Horne's low,
teasing voice interrupted her bitter reverie.
She made a sudden resolution, rose with sprightly vivacity from her
chair, flung a sparkling glance to her mother whose beautiful face was a
little pinched with the strain under which she had lived these last few
weeks. "Dance, of course. Van!" she cried, wrinkling her nose at him
with a provocative moue. "I was dreaming about you! Aren't you
flattered?"
She saw her mother's pinched face flush and bloom with hope, caught an
austere but approving smile from Courtney Barr, with whom she had not
yet reached the intimacy that should exist between a father and a
daughter, even an adopted daughter. If she could make them so happy by
marrying Arthur Van Horne, why let her own feelings prevent? If she
couldn't have David, what difference did it make whom she married? And
if she married Van Horne the only menace to her mother's reputation
would be removed.
"You adorable little thing!" Van Horne whispered, as he swept her out
upon the crowded dance floor. "So you were dreaming about me? Pleasant
dreams, little Princess Lalla?" His ardent, dark face was bending close,
his black eyes free of mockery but lit by a fire that repelled her.
"Did you really fall in love with 'Princess Lalla'?" Sally forced
herself to ask coquettishly, fluttering her long lashes in the demure
fashion which had proved so effective during her short career as a
debutante.
"Absurd question!" Van Horne jeered softly. "Didn't I convince you at
the time? Listen, Sally, I almost never see you alone. Enid seems to
have an antiquated leaning toward chaperonage."
"Chaperons are 'coming in' again," Sally laughed at him, hiding her
distaste. "Mother adores being a leader of fashion, you know."
"You're so adorable tonight that I want to run away with you," Van told
her boldly. "But I'll try to be content if you'll promise me to come to
my apartment alone for tea tomorrow. Do, Sally! I've something to tell
you. Can you guess?"
She stiffened, every nerve on the defensive against him. But she
remembered her resolution, and nodded slowly, her head tucked on one
side, her eyes granting him a swift, shy upward glance.
"If you look at me like that again, I'll kiss you right here on the
dance floor!" Van threatened exultantly, as his arms tightened about
her.
Enid's pathetic gratitude to her for being "nice" to Van Horne
strengthened the girl's resolution to carry it through. She dressed with
especial care for her tea date with Van the next afternoon, pinning the
corsage of Parma violets which he had sent her on the full shawl collar
of her Russian squirrel coat.
But before she left her room she took the ring David had given her from
the box in which she had hidden it because the sight of it hurt her so
intolerably, and kissed the shallow, flawed little sapphire with
passionate grief.
"Goodby, David," she whispered to the ring, but inconsistently she
thrust it into her dark-blue and gray leather handbag. No matter what
sort of ring Van gave her, it could never be so precious to her as this
cheap little ring that David had given her to mark their betrothal.
She had visited Van Horne's apartment once before with Enid, but as she
gave the floor number to the elevator operator--it was one of the most
exclusive and expensive of the new Park Avenue apartment houses--she
thought she saw a gleam of amusement in the man's eyes.
Almost as soon as her finger had pressed the bell the door was opened by
Van himself, Van in a black and maroon silk dressing gown over
impeccable trousers and shirt. She was drawing back instinctively when
he laughed his low, mocking laugh and, seizing her hands, pulled her
resisting body into the room.
"I think one reason I am so mad about you, Sally my darling, is that you
are always fluttering out of my reach like a frightened bird. You are
superb in a Lillian Gish role, but even Lillian Gish is captured and
tamed before the end of the film. Like this!" And he laughed exultingly
as his arms encircled her quivering, fluttering little body, held it
crushingly against his breast.
Only her head was free to weave from side to side as his flushed,
laughing face came closer and closer. "The best kissing technique
advocates the closing of the eyes, darling," he gibed with tender
mockery. "And there is a point at which maidenly coyness ceases to be
charming. Now!"
She submitted to his kiss then, but her lips were lax, unresponsive.
When he released her, an angry glint in his eyes, she backed away,
touching her lips involuntarily with her handkerchief. "Please
don't--kiss me again--like that, Van," she quavered. "Not yet. I'll
marry you, but you'll have to give me time to get used to--you."
The blank amazement in his eyes made her voice falter lamely. Then he
laughed, a short bark that was utterly unlike the tenderly mocking
laughter which she had always inspired in him.
"You'll _marry_ me?" His voice was staccato with contempt. "By heaven,
your naivete is magnificent! You should be enshrined in a museum! Thanks
for your kind offer, Miss Barr, but I must confess, if your innocence
will stand the strain, that my intentions in regard to you did not
include marriage. They were strictly dishonorable. When a Van Horne
allows himself to be led to the altar, the successful huntress is a
woman who is at least socially worthy to be the mother of future Van
Hornes. There is as yet no bar sinister on our coat of arms....
"No, walk, not run, to the nearest exit." He barked his new, ugly laugh
at her as Sally was backing hurriedly toward the door, her body hunched
as if his words had been actual blows, her face ghastly white. "You are
entirely free to go, with my blessing! I am rather a connoisseur at
kissing and I have just suffered a grievous disappointment. At the risk
of appearing ungallant, I am forced to admit that you would have bored
me intolerably if you had consented to 'trust me and give me all' in
exchange for my silence in regard to your birth. Goodby, Sally--and good
luck."