Coming Through the Rye (19 page)

Over and over again she read it, with a pause between, speaking distinctly, saying it each time as if it were a new sentence. For who could tell which time it would reach the deadened brain and stir the heart?

She had repeated it over and over again perhaps for an hour to the motionless figure upon the bed, when suddenly the sick man's eyes opened, as they had done once before, and he looked at her as out of the dark, hungrily, eagerly, a great longing in his look.

Romayne's heart almost stood still, but somehow she controlled her voice and went steadily on in a conversational tone as if she were telling him something they both knew was true, reminding him, reassuring him, with a smile of comfort on her lips.

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.”

Suddenly there came other verses as if they were sent to reinforce this one, verses she had not thought of for years, that she must have learned at her mother's knee.

“He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

“The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”

“The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

“As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”

“Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.”

“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

The eyes in the twisted face upon the pillow were bright with a kind of light of comprehension. They seemed to be hanging on her every word, or so it seemed to her.

Romayne marveled that somehow strength came to keep her voice steady and give her words to speak. It was wonderful. How was it that all those verses spoke themselves through her lips for the need of the soul in agony? It was as if God Himself were speaking through her. And there seemed to have come a change upon the face of the sick man—a softened look, an eagerness, not so stricken, not so twisted as before. She arose and stood beside the bed, and his eyes distinctly followed her.

The door opened suddenly, quietly, and the nurse stood beside them. The sick man's eyes looked at the nurse and went blank and shut as if a door had been closed. One looking at him could scarcely realize that his eyes had been open but an instant before.

The nurse put out a practiced finger on the pulse, and said, “Ummmmh! You better let him rest now!”

And Romayne went out of the room and dropped upon her knees beside her bed.

T
he next day there was a big raid in the city, and more than seventy-five thousand dollars' worth of bonded liquor was seized in an apartment house on one of the finest streets.

A few minutes later Evan Sherwood was shot in the left shoulder as he was crossing an alleyway not far from the scene of the raid, and was carried to his rooms in a serious condition. The bullet, which was evidently intended for his heart, passed through the fleshy part of the left arm and lodged under the shoulder blade, and the best surgeon's skill in the city was summoned to remove it.

Meantime the assassin escaped, and the city was agog with excitement. Wireless messages were sent to the white-winged yacht that carried Judge Freeman and his gang, and the cabin was rife with speculations and plans. Here was another man, it appeared, with whom they could gladly dispense. Evan Sherwood had given them more trouble than all the rest of the city's population put together. He was absolutely fearless and absolutely unbribable. He seemed to be gifted with uncanny powers and could scent out a plot as fast as it was hatched. He was never off his job, never seemed to rest nor play, and apparently had no family or close attachments whom they could kidnap or otherwise strike him through. The gang had been driven to sea to get out of his way, and now, just when they had hoped that things were quieting down and they might return, here had happened this double blow. The biggest enterprise they had, which had been bringing in goodly returns daily, was revealed to the light of day and their henchmen scattering like rats from a burning building. It was disgusting. It was unbearable! And now this damnable young upstart had gotten himself shot like a hero and was in the limelight more than ever. If he would only die of his wounds and get out of their way finally, they might go home and bring flowers and attend his funeral, even sympathize with anybody who pretended to care about him, if afterward they might get to work to repair the damage he had done to their fortunes. But if he got well, he would be more than ever a hero, and folks who had smiled at the dramatically inclined leader of a lot of fanatics would begin to admire and then to follow. Oh, Judge Freeman and his gang knew men, and they understood what an advantage it would be to them if Evan Sherwood were to die.

There were other people who understood that also. There was a mean little rat of a saloonkeeper, whose place had been among the first raided, who went so far as to offer his services as nurse that he might make
sure
that Evan Sherwood did not live. But that was a thing that would never have come out if Chris Hollister hadn't happened to be hidden, for purposes of his own, behind the fence of the dirty junkyard where the saloonkeeper and two of his cronies hatched out the idea. But, of course, the League was not doing things with its eyes shut, and no strange man with an eye and a jaw such as the would-be nurse owned would have gotten within a hundred yards of their beloved hero.

Besides all this, Aunt Patty was on guard, doubly alive to dangers both from without and within, Aunt Patty, who had nursed Evan through chickenpox and scarlet fever and whooping cough, and then in later years through typhoid fever and pneumonia, and no one, neither friend nor foe, need hope to get by Aunt Patty.

So the saloonkeeper slept in the jail that night along with his two cronies, thanks to Chris, and the town was out hotfoot after the man who had shot Evan Sherwood. The newsboys were calling special editions of the paper, and Romayne, going out sadly to mail a letter, wondered what it was all about, and why people cared to read papers and gloat over other people's troubles. She had enough of her own without reading about others, and how did it happen that her family had not been shouted about in the streets? Poor child! Little she knew how much they had been! But she had mercifully been spared all that. At the next corner the newsboy yelled it in her very ear: “All about the shooting! Evan Sherwood shot!”

It was the first time she had heard the name, the hated name that was connected with her father's disgrace. She stopped short and listened while the boy cried out once more: “Evan Sherwood shot in de heart!”

Romayne walked very fast away from him, a sick feeling at her heart. Then he was gone, dead! He would trouble her no more with his officiousness!

His fine, strong face came back to her clearly as he stood looking down at her that first night, begging her to sit down, assuring her that no harm should come to her personally.

She tried to conjure his look of superiority when he had told her that the house was under suspicion, and the white anger that had overspread his face when she mocked him and tried to use the telephone, and when she had called him a coward. Oh, he wasn't a coward! She knew that now. The things that had happened since, the respect he was held in by the officers who had been about their house, all showed her he was not a coward. And he had been right in being angry at the things she had said. They had been contemptible—if she had realized what she was doing.

But try as she would, she could not remember his face in anything but the expression of kindness when he had offered to help her in any way in his power.

She had a depressed feeling that it was somehow her fault that he had died—as if her own feeling had been a part of a great unfriendly force that had killed him, and she, though unconsciously, had helped it on. Were things like that in the world? Were there perhaps forces in the air of evil and of good, just as there were sounds lying about stored up in the atmosphere that the radio set free? Was there perhaps some way in which unpleasant enmities combined into a great force that something let loose against a fellow being to down him? What a strange idea! She must not think such things. Perhaps she was losing her mind. Of course, this young man was nothing to her—only—she had asked him never to let her have to see him again—and it seemed now somehow as if that wish of hers had gone into the assassin's bullet and helped to send it on its way.

She tried to throw off all thoughts of the young man. It was nothing to her, of course, his death. Her contact with him had been brief and sharp, and at least she need have no more fear of being humiliated by meeting him again. She walked toward the park and tried to be rested by the evening sounds of the little city birds gossiping in the twilight. She sat down on a bench and endeavored to carry out the suggestion of the doctor and nurse and detach herself from her situation, just to rest her mind and body from the awful burden she carried day and night. But there was over her a feeling of catastrophe, of depression that she could not shake off.

And when she tried to analyze it, she found that it was because she had heard that Evan Sherwood was dead. Why did that make the world seem even a drearier place than it had been before? He was less than nothing to her. Yet the thought of his young face lying dead seemed unspeakably sad; the thought of his strong, true personality gone from the world made it seem less safe than it had been before.

Had she then been relying half-unconsciously on his promise to help? Why, it had never occurred to her before, since he made it a condition of leaving her that she would call upon him if she ever were in need of his help. Had somehow the vague sense of his being there if stress came helped her any? She could not tell. She only knew that she felt in a sense bereft—as if the world had been robbed of one more thing that had made living possible.

Well, it was ridiculous! She would go home and sit with her father again. He was her responsibility, her life. The only thing worthwhile living for now was to watch for his eyes to open once more with that look of hungry eagerness.

Since the nurse had found him with his eyes open, she had scarcely left him, and Romayne had had no further opportunity to repeat the wonderful verses to him again. She somehow felt she must not do it with the nurse in the room. The fact that her father had closed his eyes both times when the nurse came made her feel that she could only communicate with him when he and she were all alone. Perhaps she could coax the nurse off to a nap during the evening, and then she would sit with him once more. It gave her a warm feeling of comfort to think that perhaps her father would open his eyes again and look into hers.

But when she reached the house and went upstairs, she found the nurse in the lower hall weeping with the evening paper in her hands, and for one awful moment she thought it was all over and her father was dead. She did not stop to realize that her father was nothing to the nurse and she would not be likely to weep if he were dead.

But before she could cry out or ask, the nurse turned toward her, wiping the tears away.

“Miss Ransom, would you mind setting with the patient for a while? Mr. Sherwood's been shot, and I feel I must go and see if there's anything I can do. His mother was one of the best patients I ever had, and I can't be content without knowing all about it. I'll not be gone long, for I promised him I wouldn't leave you, not without letting him know, leastways, but I can't keep my thoughts going till I know how it fares with him. I'll ask the officer to set up in the hall if you should want anything, and he can phone for me if there's any change—not that there will be, of course.”

“I'll be glad to stay,” answered Romayne quickly, “and you needn't speak to the officer. I'd rather he stayed downstairs. I like to be alone with my father; it comforts me.”

“Well, I'll not be long then, for I promised Mr. Evan faithfully I wouldn't leave you—”

“You promised who?” ask Romayne surprisedly.

“Why him! Evan Sherwood. Him that's shot!” answered the nurse with a suppressed sob. “He was always one fer caring fer other people, and he wanted you should be looked after real constant. He said you was fine as silk.”

The nurse, with another semblance of a sob in her voice, vanished up the stairs, leaving Romayne with a strange sensation of mingled amazement and pleasure, albeit mingled with irritation. He had presumed then, in spite of all she had said, to keep a guardianship over her. It was kind of him, of course, but unnecessary, and a part of his dominating character probably that could not bear to have anybody else plan anything or do anything without his surveillance.

Yet—he had said she was fine as silk. And somehow her pride was soothed by that.

She went upstairs, took off her hat, and went straight to her father's room. He lay sleeping as usual in that deathlike trance. It was very still in the room after the nurse had shut the front door. She could hear the soft plunk of her rubber heels on the pavement as she hurried long. It seemed to the girl as she stood by the bed and watched her father that he scarcely was breathing at all, and she found herself putting up a prayer that he might waken once more and give her some sign that he was comforted from that terror that had been in his eyes before he fell.

Softly she began in her quiet voice to repeat again the verses in the order that she had repeated them before—very quietly at first, for she did not wish to arouse the attention of the officer downstairs. On and on, verse after verse, again and again, watching with tense, strained nerves for some sign that she was heard.