Somehow she made her way home, crept painfully, like a mortally wounded
animal, up the circular staircase to her room. Bracing her shaking hands
on her dressing table, she stared at her reflection in the mirror as if
she had never seen that white-faced, enormous-eyed, stricken girl
before.
Then horror and loathing of herself swept over her with such force that
her knees buckled, and she sank to the floor. As she fell her hand
knocked from the dressing table a copy of The Capital City Press, for
which she was still subscribing, over her mother's protest, to glean
sparse news of David.
She shuddered as the roll bounced from her knees but in another moment
her sick eyes flamed with new life, for half-revealed by the folding of
the sheets was an unmistakable picture of the boy she still loved.
Her trembling fingers gouged at the wrapper. Why was _his_ picture on
the front page? Was he in trouble? Hurt? Or--married?
Sally, crouching on the floor of her room, spread the crackling sheets
of The Capital City Press, her eyes devouring the two-column picture of
David Nash. Two lines of type above the photograph leaped out at her:
"Honor graduate of A. & M. inherits grandfather's farm."
He hadn't been injured or killed in an accident, he wasn't married! In a
frenzy of relief and gratitude to the God she had just been accusing of
deserting her, Sally Barr, who had been Sally Ford, bent her head until
her lips rested on the lips of the photograph. And it was rather a pity
that Arthur Van Horne, "connoisseur of kissing," was not there to see
the passionate fervor of the kisses which the girl whom he had dismissed
contemptuously was raining upon an unresponsive newspaper picture.
When at last she was calmer she read the short item through. It was the
last paragraph that brought her to her feet, her slight body electric
with sudden determination:
"Young Nash is living alone in the fine old farmhouse, and apparently is
as capable in the kitchen as on the seat of a cultivator. He says his
whole heart is in scientific farming, and that his only sweetheart is
'Sally,' a blue-ribbon heifer which he is grooming to break the world's
butter-fat production record."
"David! Darling David!" she was laughing and crying at the same time.
"He hasn't changed! He hasn't forgotten that we're half-married!"
Jerking open a drawer of her dressing table she caught sight of her face
in the mirror, and her eyes widened with delighted surprise. Gone was
the pinched, white, shame-stricken face, and in its place was beauty
such as she had never dreamed she possessed. She turned away from the
mirror, tremulous and abashed, for what she had to do would not be easy.
Her eyes tried to avoid the exquisite photograph of her mother that
stood in its blue leather frame on the dressing table, but at last she
snatched it up and carried it against her breast as she ran to her desk.
She felt that she was talking to Enid as she wrote, pleading for
understanding and forgiveness from those dreaming, misty,
cornflower-blue eyes:
"Mother, darling: I'm running away, to go to David. Please don't try to
stop me or bring me back, for I'll have to run away again if you do. I'm
going to marry David because I love him with all my heart and because he
is the only man I could ever marry without causing you shame. He already
knows the truth, and it made no difference in his love for me. You know
how it was with Grant Proctor. You said yourself that if I told him, he
would not want to marry me. And I could never marry a man without first
telling him the truth. Arthur Van Horne knew and wanted me to be his
mistress. He told me today. He did not think I was good enough to be his
wife. It would always be the same. And so I am going to David, who knows
and loves me anyway.
"Oh, Mother, forgive me for hurting you like this! But don't you see
that I would hurt you more by staying? After a while you would be
ashamed of me because I could not marry. I would humiliate you in the
eyes of your friends. And I could not be happy ever, away from David. I
wanted to die after Arthur Van Horne told me today what he really wanted
of me, but now I know I want to live--with David. Please, Mother, don't
think my love for you--"
She could write no more just then. Laying her hot cheek against the cold
glass of the framed photograph of her mother she sobbed so loudly, so
heart-brokenly that she did not hear a knock upon the door, did not know
her grief was being witnessed until she felt a hand upon her shoulder.
"Sally, darling! What in the world is the matter?" It was Enid Barr's
tender, throaty contralto.
Sally sprang to her feet, her eyes wild with fear, her mother's picture
still tightly clutched in her hands. "I--I was writing you a letter!"
she gasped. "I--I--"
"Perhaps I'd better read it now," Enid said in an odd voice, and reached
for the scattered sheets of pale gray notepaper on the desk.
Sally wavered to a chair and slumped into it, too dazed with despair to
think coherently. She could not bear to look at her mother, for she knew
now how cowardly she had been, how abysmally selfish.
Her flaming face was hidden by her hands when, after what seemed many
long minutes, she heard her mother's voice again:
"Poor Sally! You couldn't trust me? You'd have run away--like that?
Without giving me a chance to prove my love for you?"
Sally dropped her hands and stared stupidly at her mother. Enid was
coming toward her, the newspaper with David's picture in it rustling
against the crisp taffeta of her bouffant skirt. And on Enid's face was
an expression of such sorrowful but loving reproach that Sally burst
into wild weeping.
"Poor little darling!" Enid dropped to her knees beside Sally's chair
and took the girl's cold, shaking hands in hers. "We all make mistakes,
Sally. I've made more than my share. Maybe I'm getting old enough now to
have a little wisdom. And I want to keep you from making a mistake that
would cause both of us--and Court--untold sorrow."
"But I love David and I shan't love anyone else," Sally sobbed, though
she knew her resistance was broken.
"I'm forced to believe that now, darling," Enid said gently. "And I
shall not stand in the way of your happiness with him. That is not the
mistake I meant."
"You mean that you'll let me marry him?" Sally cried incredulously. "Oh,
Mother! I love you so!"
"And I love you, Sally." Enid's voice broke and she cuddled Sally's cold
hands against the velvety warmth of her own throat. "Your mistake would
have been to run away to marry David. You have a mother and father now,
Sally. You're no longer a girl alone, as David called you. You have a
place in society as our daughter, whether you want it or not. If David
wants to marry you, he must come here to do so, must marry you with our
consent and blessing."
"But--" Sally's joy suddenly turned to despair again. "He wouldn't marry
a girl with a fortune. He told me so when he was here."
"That was when he was penniless himself," Enid pointed out. "I've just
read this newspaper story about his inheriting his grandfather's farm.
It's a small fortune in itself, and since there's no immediate danger of
your inheriting either my money or Court's, I don't believe he will let
your prospective wealth stand in the way--if he loves you."
"Oh, he does!" Sally laughed through her tears. "Look!" She snatched the
newspaper from the floor and pointed to the last paragraph of the story
about David. "He named his prize heifer after me! It says here his only
sweetheart is 'Sally'! Oh, Mother, I didn't know anyone could live
through such misery and such happiness as I felt today! I wanted to kill
myself after Van--Oh!"
"Tell me just exactly what he said to you!" Enid commanded, her lovely
voice sharpened with anger and fear.
When Sally had repeated the contemptuous, sneering speech as accurately
as possible, her mother's face, which had been almost ugly with anger,
cleared miraculously.
"The man is an unspeakable cad, darling, but I am almost glad it
happened, since you escaped unscathed. He won't bother us again. I'm
sure of it! He is not quite low enough to gossip about me to my friends.
It is evident that he planned all along to use his knowledge as a club
to force you to submit to his desires. And now that he doesn't want you
any more, he will lose interest in the whole subject. I've known Van
nearly all my life and I've never known him to act the cad before. He's
probably despising himself, now that his fever has cooled. If you marry
David with our consent, he'll probably turn up at your wedding and offer
sincere congratulations with a whispered reassurance as to his ability
to keep our secret."
"_When_ I marry David, not if!" Sally cried exultantly, flinging her
arms about her mother's neck. "Oh, I'm so glad I have a mother!"
"Don't strangle me!" Enid laughed. "Leave me strength to write a
proposal of marriage to this cocksure young farmer who brags that he is
as capable in the kitchen as on the seat of a cultivator!"
"He can't cook half as well as I can!" Sally scoffed. "You ought to
taste one of my apple pies! He can play nurse to his blue-ribbon stock
all he wants to, but he's got to let me do the cooking! And, Mother,
you'll tell him how much I love him, won't you? And--and you might
remind him that we only need half a marriage ceremony--the last half.
Wouldn't it be fun if we could go back to Canfield and let 'the marrying
parson' finish the job?"
"Don't be too confident!" Enid warned her. "He may refuse you!" But at
sight of Sally's dismay she relented. "I know he loves you, darling.
Don't worry. If I were you I'd get busy immediately on a trousseau."
"One dozen kitchen aprons will top the list," Sally laughed.
Four days later the second telegram that Sally had received from David
arrived. "Catching next train East, darling. Happiest man in the world.
Can we be married day I arrive? Am wiring your blessed mother also. I'll
be loving you always. David."
"Of course you can't be married the day he arrives!" Enid exclaimed
indignantly when Sally showed her the telegram. "I'm going to give you a
real wedding."
"I think the children are right, Enid." Courtney Barr unexpectedly
championed Sally in her protest. "A quiet impromptu wedding, by all
means. Our announcement to the papers will indicate that we approve, and
since the boy is unknown in New York and Sally has only just been
introduced, I think the less fuss the better."
Sally kissed him impulsively, aware, though the knowledge did not hurt
her, that he liked her better now that she was to leave his home, than
he had ever liked her. David arrived on Monday, and was guest of honor
that night at a small party of Enid's and Sally's most intimate friends,
at which time announcement of the forthcoming marriage was made. They
remembered having seen him briefly at Sally's coming-out party and so
handsome he was, so much at ease, now that he was to be married to the
girl he loved, that it occurred to none of Enid's guests to question his
eligibility. Sally, sitting proudly beside him, looked happily from her
mother to David, knew that in gaining a husband she was not losing a
mother, as she would have done if Enid had not interrupted the writing
of that terrible letter.
On Tuesday Sally and David, accompanied by Enid and Courtney Barr, went
to the municipal building for the marriage license, and the afternoon
papers carried the news on the front pages, under such headlines as:
"Popular Deb to Marry Rich Farmer." But in all the stories there was no
hint of scandal, no reportorial prying into the "past" of the adopted
daughter of the rich and prominent Courtney Barrs.
The wedding took place on Wednesday, in the drawing-room of the Barrs'
Fifth Avenue mansion, and the next morning, in his account of the "very
quiet" wedding, a society editor commented: "The ceremony was read by
the Reverend Horace Greer, of Canfield, ----, the choice of celebrant
being dictated by unexplained sentiment."
What the society editor did not know was that "the marrying parson" of
Canfield spoke only the last half of the marriage service, beginning
where he had been interrupted nearly three years before.
Sally and David were no longer "half married."
THE END
----
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WHIRLWIND
By Eleanor Early
Author of Orchid
Sybil Thorne was 18 when she first got herself talked about. A creature
of moods and tempers, beautiful, headstrong, believing herself a war
bride, she vowed never to marry again. Yet, after promising Craig
Newhall to marry him, the man who told her he could never be jealous of
a dead man, she impetuously married a man she had known but a few days
aboard a steamer for Havana.
Disillusioned after a few days' romance, she returns without her
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again as he is about to leave with her sister-in-law. On the day she
gets her divorce, he is killed in an accident. That night "she put on a
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Almost having decided finally to marry Craig, back from the grave came
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GOOD GIRL
By Roy L. Foley
The greatest mystery in Nancy Deane's life was herself. Scarcely a day
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also lost her job.
Which meant she had to look for work in spite of the fact that she was
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In quest of a job she is thrown into strange company for her but not so
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Nancy is a beautiful girl and as a result runs the whole gamut of
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As Ginger Varden, sophisticated but big hearted, said, "Listen about the
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For the Stories You Like, Read White House Novels
THE YELLOW STUB
By Ernest Lynn
A furious tale of modern crime, involving a clash between a resolved
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who knows his underworld.
A staid, respectable citizen of Grafton is found murdered in the most
disreputable hotel in town. The community and the victim's family are
not only shocked but his family is also faced with disgrace because in
the murdered man's room is found a woman's handkerchief.
There is one other clue--The Yellow Stub--which proves to be the key
link in an amazing chain of mystery and which plays the principal part
in removing the cloud which might have hung forever over the dead man's
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With this slender clue, alone and armed only with the weapons of courage
and persistence, the murdered man's son sets out to solve the mystery
and avenge his father's slayers. He is led into a vicious labyrinth of
widely ramified modern gangdom, with danger and death lurking in every
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RIVAL WIVES
By Anne Austin
Author of "Daughters of Midas," "The Black Pigeon," and "The Avenging
Parrot"
Nan Carroll was Attorney John Morgan's capable private secretary ...
"Almost a junior partner in the firm," insisted Willis Todd, Nan's only
boy friend. It was Willis, too, who made Nan realize that she was in
love with Morgan, Morgan who idolized his beautiful selfish wife, Iris.
Shocked at finding herself in love with a married man, Nan decided to
resign her position.
Circumstances made this impossible, however, and before she could carry
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Here are characters you will recognize as real, faced with problems of
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Anne Austin has succeeded in writing another story of compelling
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THE BLAZING HORIZON
By Ernest Lynn
The True Story of Pawnee Bill
A thrilling, red-blooded tale of a picturesque character against the
background of hell-roaring towns where men drank, quarreled, killed and
went about their business; of primeval passions ruling the hearts of men
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Gordon Lillie, as Pawnee Bill, the hero of countless men and boys of
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JEALOUS WIVES
By Ernest Lynn
Author of "The Blazing Horizon," "The Yellow Stub"
Should there be a single standard of morals for men and women? Should a
wife convict a husband on circumstantial evidence? Is a woman's
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In JEALOUS WIVES is one married couple who preach the single standard
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in disaster.
Then there are two main characters who believe in the single standard;
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flirtation.
A vivid, fast story of the present day.
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