Girl Alone Part 34

CHAPTER XVII

It was a desolately unhappy Sally who began what she considered the unbearable task of living those two years which Courtney Barr had decreed should separate the orphan, Sally Ford, from the society debutante, Sally Barr. A dozen times, at least, during those first few weeks she would have run away, straight to David Nash, if she had not given her word of honor both to her mother and to her mother's husband.

But, almost insensibly, she began to enjoy life again. It was a soul-satisfying experience to have an apparently unlimited supply of spending money and the most beautiful wardrobe of any girl in the little Virginia city to which Courtney Barr had taken her. For many days almost every mail brought her a package from New York, addressed in Enid Barr's surprisingly big handwriting. She and her mother wrote each other twice a week, and Enid early formed the habit of sending her a weekly budget of clippings from the papers about the social set in which the Barrs moved so brilliantly-"so you will become acquainted with the names of those who will be your friends," as Enid wrote her daughter.

Gradually the unreality of her new position and of her future expectations wore off and Sally came to regard herself as really the daughter of the Courtney Barrs.

She lived for the rest of the summer with Courtney Barr's third cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Barr, who were glad of both the money and the companions.h.i.+p which Sally brought them. To their friends the Charles Barrs explained that Sally was an orphaned cousin, and the story apparently was never questioned. She was accepted cordially by the carefree young people of the small city's best social set, and was sometimes ashamed of the pleasure she had in being a popular, well-dressed, pretty young girl.

She reproached herself for not mourning constantly for David, but she knew that not for an instant were her loyalty and love for him threatened by her strange new experiences. And, although she had given her promise not to write to David, she composed long, intimate letters to him every week, putting them away in her trunk in the confident belief that he would some day read them and love them, because she had written them.

She told him everything in these letters she could not send-told him of the two or three nice boys who declared their puppy love for her; confessed, with tears that blistered the pages, that she had let one of them kiss her, because he seemed so hurt at her first refusal; described her new clothes with child-like enthusiasm; tucked snapshots of herself in the enchanting new dresses between the folded pages; in fact, poured out her heart to him far more unaffectedly than would have been possible if she had been mailing the letters.

Not feeling at all that she was breaking her promise, she subscribed to The Capital City Press and to the college newspaper, avidly searching them for any news of David and jealously h.o.a.rding the clippings with which her diligence was rewarded.

In this way she learned that he was elected president of the junior cla.s.s; that he "made" the football eleven as halfback; that-and she almost fainted with terror-that he was slightly injured during the Thanksgiving game, when A. & M. beat the State University team in a bitterly fought contest.

By that time she was in the finis.h.i.+ng school which Courtney Barr had chosen for her, and was herself becoming prominent in school activities through her talent for dramatics. When David's college paper printed a two-column picture of her sweetheart she cut it out and framed it. The greatest joy she had that first year of her new life was to hear the other girls rave about his good looks and his athletic record, of which she bragged swaggeringly.

During the spring term she was chosen by the dramatic director to take the lead in the school's last play of the year, "The Clinging Vine."

Sally Ford, or Sally Barr, as she was known at the school, was again happy "play-acting." Enid and Courtney Barr came down from New York for the play and for commencement exercises, though Sally would not graduate for another year. It was the first time she had seen her mother since they had parted in the little mid-western town where Enid had found Sally being married to David Nash.

"But how adorably pretty you are!" Enid exclaimed wonderingly, when she had the girl safe in the privacy of her own suite in a nearby hotel. "I wanted to nudge every fond mama sitting near me and exult, 'That's my daughter! Isn't she beautiful? Isn't she a wonderful little actress?'

Are you happy, darling?"

Sally, her cheeks poppy-red with excitement and pleasure in her success in the school play, twirled lightly on the toe of her silver slipper, so that her pink chiffon skirt belled out like a ballet dancer's.

"Happy? I'm thrilled and excited right now, and happy that you're here, but sometimes I'm lonely, in spite of my new friends-Oh, Mother," she cried, catching Enid's hands impulsively, "won't you let me go back with you and Mr. Barr now? I want to be with someone I belong to! I don't fit in here, really. I-I guess I'm still Orphan Sally Ford inside. I'm always expecting them to snub me, or to taunt me."

Enid's eyes filmed over with tears, but she shook her head. "We must try to be patient, darling. I want you to be at home with girls like these-girls who have always had money and social position and-and culture. It's a loathsome word, but I don't know any better one for what I mean. Don't you see, sweetheart? Mother wants you to be ready for New York when you come, so that you will be happy, but not timid and ill-at-ease. Court was really very wise. I've come to see that now.

Please try to be patient, darling."

"And this summer?" Sally quivered. "He said I could be with you at your Long Island home-"

But Enid was shaking her head again, her eyes infinitely fond and pitying. "I'm going abroad, dear. I haven't been very well this winter-just tired from too much gayety, I think. The doctors advise a rest cure in southern France. I want you to go to a girls' camp in New Hamps.h.i.+re. It's really a part of your education, social and physical. I want you to ride and swim and hike all summer, with the sort of girls whom you'll be meeting when you do join us in New York.

"You're to learn to play golf, perfect your game of tennis. By the way, I want you to go to as many house parties on your holidays as you can.

Learn to flirt with the college youngsters you'll meet; be gay, don't be-"

"Inst.i.tutional," Sally interrupted in a low voice as she turned sharply away from her mother.

It was almost a relief to the girl when Enid was gone. Her mother's exquisite, fragile beauty, her unconscious arrogance, her sophistication, her sometimes caustic wit, formed a barrier between them, in spite of the almost wors.h.i.+pful love that Sally felt for her.

Enid, when she was with her, somehow made the 17-year-old-girl feel gawky, underdone, awkward, shy. Those cornflower blue eyes, when they were not misted with tears of affection for this daughter whom she had so recently discovered, seemed to Sally to be a powerful microscope trained upon all her deficiencies, enlarging them to frightening proportions. She knew that in these moments of critical survey her mother was looking upon her, not as a beloved daughter miraculously restored to her, but as a future debutante, bearer of the proud name of Barr, and as a p.a.w.n in the marriage game as it is played in the most exclusive circles in New York Society.

And Sally squirmed miserably, pitifully afraid that she would never measure up to the standard which her mother and Courtney Barr had set for her, knowing, too, deep in her heart, that she did not want to. For her heart had been given to a golden young G.o.d of a man, whose kingdom was the soil, and whose wife needed none of the qualities which Enid Barr was bent upon cultivating in her daughter.

But twelve years of implicit obedience to the authorities at the orphanage had left their indelible mark upon Sally Ford, who was now Sally Barr. She would do her best to become the radiant, cultured, charming, beautiful young creature whom Enid Barr wanted as a daughter.

And since she had Enid's letters to help her, the task was not so impossible as it had seemed to her. For in the letters Enid was more real as a mother than she could yet be in actual contact. The fat weekly envelopes were crammed with love, maternal advice, encouragement, tenderness.

Sally sometimes had the feeling that through these letters of her mother's she knew Enid Barr better than anyone had ever known her. And she loved her with a pa.s.sionate devotion, which sometimes frightened her with its intensity. Gazing at David's picture, clipped from the college newspaper, she wondered, with a cruel pain banding her heart, if this almost idolatrous love for her mother would ultimately force her to give up David. If it should ever come to a choice between those two well-beloved, what should she do?

Sometimes she agonized over the fear that David might have ceased to love her, might have found another girl, might even be married.

Sometimes her hands shook so as they spread out the flat-folded sheets of the college newspaper and of the Capital City _Press_ that she had to clasp them tightly until the spasm of fear subsided. And each time the relief was so great that she sang and laughed and danced like a joy-crazy person.

The other girls jeered at her good-naturedly because she was always singing, "I'll be loving you-always!" But she did not care. It was her song-and David's.

She followed, with that obedience so deeply implanted in her, every phase of the program which Enid and Courtney Barr had mapped out for her. She went to the girls' camp in New Hamps.h.i.+re and returned to school in Virginia that fall strong and tanned and boyish-looking, and was able to report to Enid that she could swim beautifully if not swiftly, could ride gracefully, could hold her own decently in a hard game of tennis, could play golf well enough not to be conspicuous on the links.

During her last term at the finis.h.i.+ng school she obediently paid a great deal of attention to her dancing, to drawing room deportment, and to her own beautiful young body, learning to groom it expertly. And during the Christmas and Easter vacations she netted three proposals of marriage, from brothers of cla.s.smates in whose homes she visited. She learned, somehow, to say "no" so tactfully that her suitors were almost as flattered by her refusals as they would have been if she had accepted them.

Enid and Courtney Barr came down from New York to see her graduate, and with them they brought the news of her legal adoption.

"A surprise, too!" Enid chanted, swinging her daughter's hands excitedly. "Court and I are going to take you to Europe with us this summer, and keep you away from New York until almost time for you to make your debut."

"Europe!" Sally was dazed. Her first thought was that Europe was so far away from Capital City and David. He was getting his diploma now, just as she was getting hers-"Oh, Mother, you haven't forgotten your promise, have you?"

Enid frowned slightly, abashed by Sally's lack of enthusiasm. "Promise, darling?"

"That I could invite David to my coming-out party? Mother, I've lived for two years on that promise!" she cried desperately, as the frown of annoyance and anger deepened on her mother's exquisite, proud little face.

Periodically, during the four months that the Barrs spent in wandering over Europe, Enid's evasive reply to Sally's urgent question thrust itself frighteningly through the new joys she was experiencing.

Enid had shrugged and said: "Remind me when we're making up the invitation list this fall, Sally." She knew now that her mother had counted on her forgetting David, that Enid had told herself until she believed it, because she wanted to believe, that the transformed Sally, the Sally whom she had remade into the kind of girl who could take her place in society as the daughter of Enid and Courtney Barr, would be a little ashamed of her 16-year-old infatuation for a penniless young farmer.

But Sally's heart had not changed, no matter how radically Enid's money, the finis.h.i.+ng school and Europe had altered her, mentally and physically.

One morning in November Sally knocked at the door of the small, pleasant room known to the Barr household as "Miss Rice's office." Linda Rice held the difficult, exacting but always exciting position of Enid Barr's social secretary. Sally liked Linda, envied her her independence, her tactful, firm handling of her sometimes unreasonable employer. As she knocked now, fear of her mother fluttered in the heart that was so full of love and admiration for her. For she knew that Enid and Linda were making up the invitation list for the long-discussed coming-out party.

"Come in," Enid's contralto voice called impatiently. "Oh, it's you, darling. How cunning you look! Turn around so I can see how that new bob looks from the back. Oh, charming! Max is a robber, but he does know the art of cutting hair. Isn't she precious, Linda?"

Sally, dressed in a deceptively simple little frock of dark blue French crepe which half revealed her slender knees, whirled obediently. The heavy, silken ma.s.ses of her black hair had long since been ruthlessly sacrificed to the shears, and now with the new Parisian cut, later to be the rage in America and known as the "wind-blown bob," she looked like an impudent little gamin, amazingly pretty and pert.

Her clear white skin contradicted the effect of the impish hair-cut, however, and persisted in making her look appealingly feminine.

"To think she can eat anything she wants and still keep that figure!"

Enid exclaimed with humorous envy. "I'd give my soul to be able to eat bread and candy again." But she looked at her own tiny body, no bigger than an ethereal 12-year-old girl's and smiled with satisfaction. "What did you want, darling? Linda and I are awfully busy.-Oh, by the way, you mustn't forget Claire's tea this afternoon. You're going to Bobby Proctor's luncheon at the Ritz, too, aren't you? Like the social whirl, sweet?"

"It still frightens me a little," Sally confessed with a slight s.h.i.+ver.

"Mother," she began with a desperate attempt at casualness, "you're sending David an invitation, aren't you? You promised, you know-"

Enid frowned and pretended to consult the copy of the long list which she had been checking when Sally interrupted. "Is David Nash's name on the list, Linda? Never mind. I'll look for it. And Linda, will you please run down and tell Randall that Mrs. Barrington will be here for luncheon today? He'll have to have gluten bread for her. Thank you, dear. I don't know what I should do without you, Linda, you priceless thing!"

When the secretary had left the room, Enid turned to Sally, who was standing beside the desk, twisting her hands nervously. "Darling, I've counted so on your not holding me to that foolish promise I made two years ago. You _must_ realize that David-dear and sweet and good as he undoubtedly is-belongs to your past, a past which I want you to forget as completely as if it had never existed."