Coming Through the Rye (14 page)

“How long have you known my brother?” she asked at last, feeling suddenly that this was a question she must know before she went further.

“Oh, about a month,” said Frances guilelessly. “We went on a joy ride, a party of us, and had a real swell time. The fella that was taking me seen a man he was keeping outta sight of, and he just turned me over to Larry, and we had the swellest kind of a time. He's a Jim Dandy, Larry is. He certainly can show a girl a nice time when he tries to.”

Romayne succeeded in controlling a shiver that threatened to seize her very soul and tried to think of something to say in a conversation like this, but she had no need, for Frances rattled on, proud to show how intimate she was with Larry.

“He's a peach, he is. The girls in our gang are all crazy about him, and when the word came that he was arrested, we all felt awful sorry. But I don't guess he'll be in long. In fact, if I tell what I know, I'm sure he won't. And I'll tell. There ain't anybody I know I'd sooner help than Larry. He's always so free with his money and showing a girl a good time and all.”

“Then you went out with him again?” asked Romayne, trying to steady her voice so that Frances would not suspect that this revelation was horrible to her.

“Yep!” Frances responded happily. “A lotta times. We went to the roof garden, oh, a lotta times, and had dinner and danced. Larry can dance! I'll say he can dance! I feel zif I was just floating on a cloud into heaven when I dance with Larry.”

She glanced admiringly at Romayne's trim little feet as they walked along.

“Say, I guess you can dance, too. With a foot like that! My, but you've got pretty feet. You're an awful pretty girl, you know,” she said. “Say! Don't you never use no rouge? You look awful pale today! I sh'd think you'd put on just a darling little bit; it would make you look sweet. Say, whyn't you get Larry to bring you along sometime with us? I'd be proud to have ya. Say, ain't it funny you should a ben Wilanna's Sunday school teacher all this time and I going with your brother and I never knew it? See, ‘twas this way. The fella that interduced us didn't say his name right plain, and I never knew till the day Larry was arrested what was his right last name. I mighta knowned he was a relation to you, though—you look so much alike. I'm awful glad it turned out this way. It's real romantic, ain't it? I was telling Ma it would be funny if we was to be—”

But Romayne interrupted her flow of terrible words hastily.

“What did you say was the matter with Wilanna? Did she have a turn for the worse? Are you sure she is not going to live?”

“Oh, I didn't explain that? Why, you see Papa got out. Krupper did it. He went hisself and gave bail. You see he didn't want Papa to give evidence against him, you know. He's got too much at stake. He's the one that owns the place at the corner where they've kept open right along, law or no law. That's the place that always gets Papa—it's so handy to home, you see, and somebody's always just coming out when he goes by and inviting him in and treating him. Krupper, he don't exactly run it hisself. He has a big place up at the Earnheim building lots sweller than this and only for real classy people. E. A. Krupper, you know, it's a king of a tea room, but there's rooms behind. I've been there myself,” she preened. “Larry took me.”

Romayne caught her breath, and her white teeth came sharply down on her crimson lower lip. How was she going to stand any more of this?

“Have you ever been there?” asked the bright-eyed Frances eagerly, keen to have some experience in common with this beautiful girl by her side.

“No,” said Romayne in a cold little voice that she could hardly hear herself. She felt as if she were freezing inside.

“Well, you oughtta get Larry to take you sometime,” Frances said blithely. “It's great! There's real velvet curtains and lace on the tablecloth, and lady waiters, awful pretty girls. They do say you can't get in there to wait unless you are awful handsome and Krupper likes you. Well, Krupper, he spends a lot of time in the back room over the place at our corner, and Papa has done one or two things for him, and so he didn't want Papa talking. So I guess that's the reason he come hisself and took Papa out. But you see, he took him around to the corner first to talk to him a bit and he treated him while he was there, give him some pretty fierce liquor, I guess, for he come home crazy. He wanted his dinner right away, and Mamma hadn't a thing in the house to cook. H'd left her without any money, and when he saw the table wasn't set nor nothing, he shook Mamma till she couldn't speak and flung her against the wall. He tried to hit me, but I run out the door, and then he went raving upstairs, and he dragged Wilanna right out of bed, yes sir, cast and all, and hit her over the head, and she just screamed and lay there all still.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Romayne, her eyes large with horror. “How terrible! Poor little girl!”

“Yes, ain't it?” went on Frances glibly. “Mamma heard her scream, and she went right up and saw him standing looking at Wilanna like he was going to strike her again, and she just took a pitcher of water off the washstand and threw it in his face so hard it dazed him, and he slid down on the floor. He lay there a few minutes while we was getting my sister back onto the bed, but the water kind of sobered him, and after while he got up and looked at Wilanna and began to cry. He's cryn' now like a big baby with his head down on the bed. He ain't all hisself, but he seems to know he done it. He was awful fond of Wilanna when he was hisself.”

“Did the doctor come?” asked Romayne, wondering why she had to be mixed up with any more horror than had fallen already to her own lot.

“Oh yes; I run after him, but he can't do nothing. He says Wilanna is awful bad again, and he don't think she can live. She's just screamed for you ever since she got back into bed again.”

They were nearing the little brick row now, and Romayne began dreading the scene that was before her. How could she go in and talk to that dying child? What was there to say that would help her? And how was she to rise beyond the awful things in her own life and help a little human soul who was passing into eternity? What a terrible thing life was!

But Frances was talking again.

“I wouldn't wonder what I can get Krupper to help Larry out if I watch my chance. He might. You know it was in his tea room that the man that was killed had been drinking. They had a post-mortem, and Krupper, he's all up in the air. If I tell him Larry and I was in the same car and saw what happened—”

Romayne turned a ghastly face toward her persecutor and tried to exclaim, but the power of speech seemed to have departed from her ashen lips. Her look almost startled the voluble Frances.

“Oh, you don't need to look like that! Nobody don't know we was there, and I went to the jail this morning to see Larry, and we got it all fixed up. I'm to tell Krupper we got evidence that won't be very nice for him, but we'll keep mum if he lets Larry out, otherwise Larry'll come out with the whole story and get 'em all in Dutch. He wouldn't really, you know, because that would give him and me away, but they don't know that, and we don't intend they shall. I'm just a tellin' you because you're his sister, and it's sort of in the family.…” She giggled consciously. “But you don't need to worry. Krupper'll get him out. I'll see to that.”

Romayne put out a trembling hand to the girl's arm.

“I wish you wouldn't, please,” she said in what she tried to make a commanding voice. “I wish you would just let things alone. We have a very powerful friend, Judge Freeman, who will probably be home tomorrow, I am told, and when he gets here, everything will be all right. You may only make more trouble if you get this Krupper into it. It is better to leave it to Judge Freeman.”

“Oh! That's a good one!” laughed Frances. “Why, Judge Freeman is one of the gang hisself, and Krupper does all his dirty work. Didn't you know that? That's why he's gone away. You won't see him round these parts for a while now. He'll leave it all to Krupper. Well, here's our house, and now you go up to Wilanna's room, and I'll just stay down here in the parlor and wait for Krupper to come. Don't you worry. Leave it all to me.”

And because she did not know what else to do, Romayne walked bravely up the stairs, her heart beating wildly, and tears struggling with her eyes and throat. She felt as if she had entered a great sewer of filth and could never find her way out of it. She felt as if her life's happiness was already soiled beyond any hope of redemption, and nothing mattered anymore. Oh life! Life! How terrible to be alive! How had she ever dared to think that to be alive was good? And where had she heard that name, Krupper?

Then as she was about to enter the shabby little room where the sick child lay moaning on her bare little bed and the father with his unshaven face buried in the sheets and his mop of greasy hair lying over the child's hands, moaning beside her, it all came back to Romayne.

“E. A. Krupper, Earnheim Building.”

It had been the address on one of the bundles that lay in the cellar—those bundles of bottles of liquid poison. And her father, her dear father, had been dealing out this poison, some of which had helped to bring this little child to her deathbed.

Then, as if a voice had spoken to her, Romayne knew what she meant to say to that father if he ever opened his eyes again and looked at her intelligently. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” That was the message she must get across to him before he went from this world with sin upon his soul.

Honor, nor riches, nor happiness, nor nothing else mattered, not even whether her brother was exonerated and set free to live his life; none of these mattered, if only her father might have his soul purged from his awful sin that was worse than murder or crime of any sort because it included all crimes, and worse to her because it had been done for her sake.

And suddenly strong to bear a message to the little passing soul, she entered the death chamber, slipped to her knees beside the bed opposite the half-drunken father, and took the little hot hand of the child in her own.

“Wilanna,” she said softly, “listen. You needn't be afraid. Jesus loves you. He died to save you. He said, ‘Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.'”

Wilanna turned her wild fevered eyes on her beloved teacher.

“Yes, but, Miss Ransom, I've been awful bad. I've told lies! A lot of them. I used to tell Mother I hadn't been away from home when she was gone out working. And I had. I'd been lots of places she said not to go to. And our teacher in school says if you told a single lie, you had to go to hell for it. Ain't that so?”

“But Jesus took your lie on Himself when He died on the cross, Wilanna. He died for your sin in your place! All He asks now is that you will just give yourself to Him and let Him take care of you. If you are sorry for your sin, He will forgive it. He died for all sin, and your sin is all paid for.”

Her voice was high-keyed almost to a scream. Romayne tried to quiet her.

“Listen, Wilanna, aren't you Jesus' child? Didn't you tell me once in Sunday school that you wanted to give yourself to Jesus and do what He wanted you to do?”

The bright eyes were upon her face, and the child nodded.

“Yes, but I ain't done it,” she sobbed.

“Then do it now,” said the girl's quiet voice.

The little girl looked in her face for a moment and then turned her eyes toward the ceiling, speaking in a shrill strange little voice, slightly raised as if she addressed someone at a distance.

“Jesus, I wantta be Your child. Won't You forgive me right now quick, because I'm going to die?”

“There!” said the child, looking at her teacher, “I done it. Is that all?”

“Yes, that's all, if you really meant it, Wilanna. He heard, and He has promised that there is no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.”

A moan from the man on the other side of the bed broke into her words, but the little weak hand of the child patted his matted hair, and Romayne marveled at the love of the child that could forgive the man who had struck her to death.

Romayne knelt beside the child's bed for an hour or more, pointing the way to the little passing soul, and when at last she went down the stairs and out into the bright spring sunshine once more, she found that her own troubles had been strangely lifted from her shrinking shoulders. Nothing seemed to matter save one great thing, to be “in Christ Jesus.” She hurried back to her home with the great thought before her of how she might get the same message to her father, shut in as he was from the world to a living death.

Her father knew the way, even better than she did. He had lived as if he believed it all his life—and yet he had done this! Well, she must just remind him of the way of life. Her father could not have loved to do this evil that had wrought havoc in so many homes. He had done it from a mistaken sense of love to her. She must show him before he went away how to be clean of his sin, or she never could live out the days that were left to her. And suddenly, as she went up the steps, a new strength came to her, and she was no more a child, but a woman with a great message to give. How she was going to do it she did not know, but there would be a way.

The nurse was coming down the stairs as she entered the front door.

“There's been a lady here to call on you,” she said. “She left her card and said she'd come again. Her name is Sherwood. She's a very nice lady.”

“Oh!” said Romayne, shrinking involuntarily. “I don't want to see her! If she comes again, please tell her I'm not seeing visitors now, not while my father is so sick.”

“Well, you're foolish, but I can't help it. There's a telegram for you, too. It came over the telephone. I wrote it down. It's just sympathy, and it's signed ‘Judge Freeman.'”