Coming Through the Rye (4 page)

The young man's voice was very gentle.

“I'm so sorry,” he said, “but Judge Freeman cannot help you now. He—”

“Oh—you needn't be
afraid
to call him!” she said contemptuously. “I'll see that you do not get into any trouble through it. We are not the kind who prosecute people even if they are—
murderers
!” she ended bitterly, with tears dropping upon the white face in her lap.

There was a little stir behind her. Almost as if a throng were entering. A strange doctor stooped beside her and slipped a practiced finger on the patrician wrist of her father. Just behind came Chris panting. The men in uniform seemed to have multiplied. They were on all sides of the room—silently. Had there been only two of them before? How confused her mind was! Perhaps she was only dreaming. Had she been going to a house party a little while before? Was this all real?

Stern-faced men were lifting her father now at the doctor's command, men in uniform, who walked with measured tread as if they were used to doing gruesome tasks, as if they were ordained of God for such terrible offices. They carried him upstairs. They did not ask her where to go. They swept her aside as if she were a child.

They opened a door at the head of the stairs. She stood dazed, watching them. How had they known which was his room? She seemed to know without seeing that they were laying him upon his bed, and they were shutting the door!

She cast a look of rebuke about upon the men who stood there silently, the man Sherwood notably at their head, the boy Chris drooping, just behind him, and fled up the stairs.

But they put her out—silently, gently, but firmly, and shut the door. She stood a moment staring horror in the face and then went swiftly down the stairs as she had come up and stopped in front of Sherwood.

“Where is my brother?” she demanded breathlessly. Her face was stained with tears, and her gold hair was ruffled around her sweet face. There was something fine and glorious in her eyes such as one sees in the eyes of a child who is in search of its mother.

A look passed between Sherwood and Chris, and back again. It said: “Did they get him?” Its answer: “They did. He is in custody.” The miserable truth sat upon Chris's nice-boy face written large. There was yearning tenderness in Sherwood's eyes as he looked back at the slender girl in her little bright spring outfit, all rumpled now and a stain of water down the front where she had spilled it trying to make her father drink.

“He is not here just now,” he temporized. “He had to go away. Will you not try to forget what part I had to play in all this and let me help you for the present?”

“
Had
to?” repeated the girl sharply, ignoring his offer. “Do you mean they took him away?” Her perceptions seemed suddenly sharply awake.

Sherwood looked at her compassionately. A flash passed between him and the boy again. She saw it.

“Have they?” she appealed to Chris.

He nodded miserably.

“Do you mean they have
arrested
my brother?” She turned back to Sherwood, her voice suddenly grown older, more mature.

Sherwood could only bow gravely.

“But—what for?”

“For complicity—with your father. They have acted together in this business—”

“Stop!” said Romayne, trying to speak calmly. “It is terrible for you to say such things with him lying up there!”

She caught her breath in a sob and hurried on: “But I want you to try to be sensible, and tell me what made you ever get an idea like this? You know you will have to
prove
a statement such as you have just made.”

The young man bowed again.

“I'm very sorry, Miss Ransom, but it has
been proved
.”

“Where is your proof?” she demanded, her eyes flashing with the restrained look of one who feels strong and sure of her position and can afford to hold her anger in abeyance until facts come to her rescue.

The young man looked at her sadly for a moment and then spoke.

“Miss Ransom, I would have spared you if I could, but I suppose you will have to know the truth sooner or later, although I would rather it were not my task to tell you. Can't you be persuaded to take my word for it, and spare yourself the unpleasant details? No one has any wish to bring trouble upon you.”

“I thought you could not prove your charges,” flashed the girl, with bitter contempt in her tone. “You are a coward and afraid to face the truth!”

For answer Sherwood turned to her, his face hardening.

“Come then,” he said half-bitterly. “I have warned you. It is your own fault if you have to suffer.”

He stepped to the panel beside the beautiful carved mantel and touched a spring. The panel swung open and disclosed a set of shelves inside, shallow shelves, as she had told him a little while before, filled with papers fastened in neat bundles with rubber bands about them, official-looking documents, and each shelf labeled with letters of the alphabet. A gleam of triumph came in her eyes.

But even as it dawned, the young man silently touched what looked like a nail head, and the whole set of shelves, papers and all, began to move, slowly, smoothly, swinging around out of sight into a recess somewhere behind the mantel, leaving a dark opening into a cavern-like space beyond. It could not exactly be called a doorway, yet it was wide enough for a person to pass through.

Romayne stood staring in amazement and said nothing.

The young man reached his hand through the opening and touched a button, and a shaded light sprang up in the space beyond.

“Come!” he said, and with strange premonition Romayne followed him, stepping through the opening with a strange sensation of fright, yet unable to refuse to follow.

It was a room that she arrived in through the narrow door, a room with little attempt at beauty and luxury. There were tables and chairs, and pictures on the wall. Several of the chairs were pushed back as if their occupants had left them in a hurry. There was a lady's glove upon the floor and a rose with a broken stem beside it. There were glasses on the tables and an odor of liquor faintly tanging the air. She looked toward the windows, doubting her exact location, and saw that they were closely and heavily curtained, and that the lamps were shrouded in dim draperies. Sherwood reached out and removed one shade, and the glare of electric light fell garishly over the place. A cupboard door half open he swung wide and disclosed rows and rows of bottles, with many labels. She did not try to read them all. Her eye caught one with terror-stricken gaze—P
URE
R
YE
W
HISKEY
, it read. There were other names that meant nothing to her, vaguely associated in her mind with a world of which she knew little. She turned, bewildered, half questioning what he meant by it all, and why this should have anything to do with her father.

“Come!” said Sherwood again, setting his firm lips to the task he did not relish. Yet this girl must be convinced.

He led her through other rooms and showed her other closets filled with more bottles, and showed her cases half open, from which the bottles had not been removed, and more cases still in their wrappings. He let her read the labels, “Utopian Refining Company”—her father's company!

And then he led her down a dark stairway into a dim cellar, where the lights were far apart and where she wandered after him through a maze of more packing cases, stopping now and then to make her read the painted lettering on their sides, and now and again to lift a lid and let her look within. They came at length to a large iron door that swung back mysteriously in the dim light, at a touch, and they stepped into what seemed a coal bin.

Stumbling after him and groping, her hand touched his, and she caught at it for support as she slipped over the loose coal.

“I must go back!” she gasped.

He caught her gently and held her firmly until she was on the smooth cement floor of the cellar again, and then he took a flashlight from his pocket and lighted the way around a strangely familiar furnace to another great packing case, whose half-open top disclosed great lumps of mineral that gleamed weirdly in the glow of the flashlight, and all at once she began to realize where she was. This was the packing case that had stood by the furnace for several weeks past. The young man lifted what seemed like the top of the case, and below were rows of bottles packed in straw. He lifted and flashed the light full into the lower compartment, then put it down again and led the way to the cellar stairs.

They mounted in silence, the girl ahead, her knees shaking weakly beneath her. The young man tried to steady her, but she drew away from him and went on by herself. So going they came once more into the wide hall and walked toward the front to the room from which they had started.

Romayne stood still for a moment, staring at the opening in the chimney panel, with the light still burning beyond and a glimpse of those awful bottles on their shelves, and then she sank into the big chair close by with a groan and covered her face with her hands.

A
bout that same time Frances Judson was dressing to go out for the evening. She called the function “I-gotta-date.” They occurred almost nightly. But this one was a special date.

She was seated before a small pine dressing table in the room that she shared with her invalid sister. A cheap warped mirror was propped up against a pile of books, and Frances was working away with her crude implements, trying to attain a makeup for the evening. There were still traces of tears on her cheeks and her eyes and a puffy look. Now and then she caught her breath in a quiver like a sob.

“Oh, dear!” she sighed miserably. “I don't see why Papa had to go and act this way again, just when I was beginning to get in with real classy people! I don't think it's fair! When folks have children, they oughtta think a little about them!”

Wilanna was to her elder sister something like a wastebasket, into whose little open mind she threw all her annoyances and disappointments. The little girl listened always patiently, with troubled countenance and sympathetic demeanor, and tried to suggest some alleviation or remedy for the trouble. Wilanna had troubles of her own, but she usually kept them to herself. Now she turned sympathetic eyes to her sister and watched her for a minute in silence as Frances dabbed a lump of cold cream on her sallow countenance and began rubbing vigorously.

There were traces of tears on the little girl's cheeks, too, and a burdened look much too old for her years in the eyes that searched her sister.

“You're not going
out—tonight
—Frannie—are you? Not
tonight
!”

“Sure!” said Frances apathetically. “I
gotta
. Larry'll give me the go-by if I stand him up. I can't afford to let the first real classy fella I ever had slip by. There's plenty a girls ready to ride with him in his automobeel if I don't go. Whadda ya think I went without lunches all last week t'save money fer that new dress for, ef I was going to stay at home?”

“But Frannie! When Papa's in trouble?”

“Trouble!” sneered Frances, mopping off the cream vigorously with a soft rag. “Well, it's his own trouble, ain't it?
I
didn't do it, did I?
You
didn't do it, did ya? Well, I should say not! Then why should I give up my pleasure just because he's gone and got hisself in jail? I guess anyhow not, Wilanna! If Papa don't think about his children and his home, why should we worry! We gotta think about ourselves, ain't we?”

“Oh, don't, Frannie!” the little girl began to cry. “Don't talk like that, Frannie! He's our papa, Sister. He's always been good to us.”

“Yes. When he didn't
drink
!” said Frances fiercely. “Whad does he wanta drink for? I ask you. Does he
havta?
You know he doesn't. You know he can come straight home with his pay envelope when he likes and give it to Mamma. It's just because he
doesn't care
! Larry says people don't
havta
drink unless they like. He says everybody has free rights ta drink or not ta drink if they like. He says this is a free country. Papa don't
havta
drink unless he likes.”

“Oh, Frannie, don't you
love
our father?”

“No!” said Frances fiercely with tears in her eyes. “Not when he makes a beast out of hisself. That's what they call it, Willie; when a man gets drunk, they say he makes a beast. It ain't so bad to drink a little in a refined way. All the fellas I go with do that, of course. But they know when to stop. You can't ever think Larry would ever come home
drunk
, would ya? Nor I.
I
drink a little evenings when I go out. They all do, but they don't drink enough to run over a woman and half kill a baby.”

“Oh, Fannie!” wailed Wilanna. “You oughtn't ta drink. You know you oughtn't. You know what we learned in school. You know what it does to the—the—the—
nerves
, and the—the—the—
brain
!”

“Aw, that's all rot! Larry says that's an exploded theory. He says young people today know a lot more'n their fathers and mothers did when they was our age, and they know how to control theirselves.”

“But, Fannie! Suppose you
couldn't!
Suppose you got drunk yourself! Some folks can't. Papa
can't
stop!”

“Aw! Cut that out, Willie! I hope you don't think I'm like Papa! Papa could stop if he liked. He don't
like!
He
wantsta
get drunk! He does it on
purpose
!”

There were two great tears in Wilanna's big blue eyes, and her bottom lip was trembling.

“But Frannie, don't you think there's something about drinking that
makes
people wantta?”

“Aw, shut up, Willie! You're only a baby. You don't know anything about such things. I'm grown up. I gotta do as the rest of the young folks do. How'd I look saying ‘No thank ya!' when everybody else was drinking? They'd all think I was afraid. They'd all know my father couldn't control hisself.”