Girl Alone Part 20

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.

"h.e.l.lo, 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 grat.i.tude 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 fl.u.s.tered 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 pa.s.sing, 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, h.e.l.lo, 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed in and out between shows. At each exit the fear-crazed carnival visitors were a.s.saulted 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 a.s.sistance.