Читать книгу Coming Through the Rye (Musaicum Romance Classics) - Grace Livingston Hill - Страница 3

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Romayne Ransom walked through the station and out to the street door looking for a taxi. There were usually three or four in sight. What had become of them all?

She set down her shiny suitcase and tapped the little new suede toe of her shoe impatiently while she waited, thinking how vexatious the whole day had been. Not a thing the way she had planned it, the whole day spoiled.

She had started off bright and early that morning in her pretty spring outfit with the dearest new wardrobe any girl had ever owned, expecting a wonderful week. Her first house party! And nothing short of a miracle that Father’s new business had materialized just in time for him to give her a substantial check with which to provide the wardrobe and the suitcase. She had thought when the invitation first came that of course she must decline it. She hadn’t a garment fit to wear at a great beautiful house party by the sea.

But the look in her father’s face had been wonderful when he handed her that check and asked her if it was enough. Enough! She had never dreamed of having half that much money for her own. And it had come so suddenly! Right out of the blue, as it were.

What fun she had had spending it!

She couldn’t remember the time when she hadn’t been poverty-stricken, never enough to get the bare necessities of life! Poor Mother, even up in heaven she must be glad to see them having it easier now. To know that her dear ones were actually going to be able to have luxuries as well as necessities. Father was talking about a car for her own driving! Wouldn’t that be wonderful! If only Mother had lived to see it all. Of course, heaven was better than anything down here, but Mother had so wanted to have things nice, and Father not so downhearted and discouraged all the time. If only she might have stayed with them just one year during their prosperity, so they could have enjoyed it together!

It had been wonderful to start off in a taxi, an expense she never dared afford before. Father had been so pleased and proud when he carried her suitcase into the parlor car for her and kissed her good-bye. The stoop in his shoulders was almost gone, and his eyes were bright as if he were happy. Poor Father, he would be so disappointed to see her coming back this way, without even a glimpse of her house party after he had gone to all the trouble and expense. But, then, she had the pretty things, and there would be other house parties.

And, of course, Isabel had been awfully nice about it, offering to send her home in the limousine, and so distressed that the note she had dispatched to her the night before, calling off the invitation until fall, had not reached her. Of course, the mistake was all on account of her having moved recently, and Isabel not noticing the new address when she had accepted, but one couldn’t expect a girl to stay home from a sudden invitation to spend three months abroad just for a house party. Isabel had tried to reach her by phone and, failing, had sent a special-delivery letter. It would probably be forwarded from the old address and reach the house tomorrow, and anyhow, Romayne was glad that she had the trip even if she didn’t stay. It was a glimpse into another lovely world and a bit of experience for her.

She made a pretty picture standing there, slim and graceful in her dainty spring outfit of soft green. Her eyes were brown, and her hair had just a hint of copper in its glowing waves, which peeped out from under the trim little hat. She couldn’t help being conscious that she looked good. It was such a new experience not to be trying to hide the faded place on her dress and the worn spot on the tip of her shoe and the darn in her glove. Everything new and lovely, and all for nothing! Oh well, Isabel would have a wonderful summer in Europe with her father, and there would be a party in the fall. She could be getting ready for it all summer. And Father and she would have wonderful times together, especially if they got that car.

But where were all the taxis? Perhaps she would have to walk two blocks and get the trolley after all. It would be hard in the hot sun, for the suitcase was heavy.

She turned her glance toward the side street, where a group of children were playing noisily on the curb in front of a row of two-story redbrick houses. Such a contrast of life to the great cool mansion at the seashore where she had lunched before coming back to the city. A wave of pity came over her for the poor little ones who lived in that hot street and never got a sight of ocean except for a sticky, noisy, crowded picnic, perhaps once a year. She, standing on a small pinnacle of recent prosperity, halfway between the fortunate wealthy friends and the unfortunate little strangers, could pity them.

Then suddenly she remembered that it was down that very street that a little Sunday school scholar of hers lived, and the minister had asked her not long ago if she wouldn’t call on the child and try to brighten her up a bit. She had been run over by a truck and broken her hip, and there was danger that the spine was involved, and she might never walk again.

In the joy of her new fortunes Romayne had completely forgotten the request. Now it suddenly came back to her. That was awkward. She might meet Dr. Stephens almost any day, and he would be likely to ask her about the child. Why couldn’t she just run back in the station and check her suitcase and make the call now? Of course, she was rather too much dressed up for that sort of thing, but it would be so good to get that duty done and off her conscience. Poor little thing! She was a sweet little girl with golden curls and blue eyes! What a pity! She would get some oranges at the fruit stand and take them to her. There was no reason in the world why she shouldn’t do it. Father wasn’t likely to be home from the corporation meeting before six, and he didn’t even know she was coming. She would just get it done at once!

So she checked her suitcase, bought some oranges and a child’s lovely magazine full of pictures, and started on her errand of mercy with a heart full of loving kindness.

She asked the group of children if they knew where Wilanna Judson lived, and they pointed out a house halfway down the next block. But when she rang the bell, it was a long time before anybody came to the door, so that Romayne almost concluded that nobody was at home until she remembered that Wilanna was not able to get up. Then she debated whether she should attempt to open the door and walk in, for perhaps the child was all alone.

But a faint step was finally heard, the door was opened a crack, and a tear-stained face peeked out and looked her over half belligerently from a dainty shoe to tip of hat.

"Could I see Wilanna Judson a few minutes?" she asked, half-wishing she had not come. "I’m her Sunday school teacher."

"Oh, come in," said the girl, opening the door grudgingly. "I didn’t know it was you at first. Yes, she’ll be glad to see you. Nobody’s paid much attention to her today."

Romayne stepped in and saw that the girl was one of those tawdrily dressed little flappers that sat in the girls’ Bible class next to her own and sang a high clear soprano. The girl looked anything but a flapper now. Her stringy hair was out of curl, and her nose was swollen with crying. Even now the tears were brimming over again.

"It’s awful good of you to come," said the girl. "I s’pose you’ve heard?"

"Heard?" asked Romayne. "Are you in trouble, dear?" It wasn’t like shy Romayne to speak to a stranger that way, but there was something in the girl’s woebegone countenance that made her sorry.

"Oh!" said the girl, bursting into tears again. "I can’t never hold up my head again!"

"What is the matter?" asked Romayne in a soothing tone. "Can’t you sit down here and tell me about it? You look awfully tired. Is Wilanna worse?"

"No!" wailed the girl. "She’s doing all right. It’s papa. He’s in jail! I thought you’d seen it in the papers."

"Why, no," said Romayne. "I’ve been away—that is, I didn’t see the paper yet. Who are you? Wilanna’s sister?"

"Yes, I’m Frances."

"Can you tell me about it? Is there anything I could do for you?"

"I don’t know," sobbed the girl. "I don’t guess there is! Mamma’s gone out to see a lawyer, but it all depends if the woman dies. You see he’d been drinking again, and he ran over a woman and just missed killing her baby, too. They took the woman to the hospital, but they think mebbe she won’t live——"

"You poor child!" soothed Romayne, trying to think what to say to one in a predicament like this. "You say he had been drinking? Why, where in the world could he get anything to drink?"

"Plenty of places!" shrugged Frances. "It’s all over. There’s a new one almost every week somewhere, and there’s devils around here always coaxing him to drink. You don’t know——"

"You poor little girl," said Romayne, laying a gentle hand on the girl’s shoulder. "Tell me all about it. I’ll tell my father and brother, and we’ll see if we can’t do something to get those places closed up. Did your father always drink?"

"No," sighed the girl, "he don’t drink when they let him alone, but it’s always going around. He wouldn’t go get it hisself, but everybody he goes with has it or treats him."

It was half-past five when Romayne came away from the Judson house, her mind filled with the sorrows of little Wilanna and her sister Frances, and turning it over how she would ask her father to get his new friend Judge Freeman to do something about the places where they were selling liquor. Of course, Frances had probably exaggerated it. There couldn’t be as many taxes as she said there were, or people would hear more about it. Of course, there was bootlegging, but that was mainly people who stole automobiles and ran away across the border of Canada, or made moonshine whiskey down in the South somewhere. It was all very vague to her. She had never taken much interest in such things. Her life had been so safe and guarded all these years, the companion of her mother during her lifetime, and now the companion of her father. But Father would be interested in the whole story, and then perhaps he would take her out to call on Judge Freeman, and she would tell him. She had always wanted to go with her father when he went to the judge’s house, but there had always been some reason why it wasn’t convenient when he had to go on business.

Thinking these thoughts, she reached the station, claimed her baggage, and signaled the taxi that had finally appeared on the scene.

"I thought there were always taxis here by the station?" she said to the man. "I waited for fifteen minutes a little while ago."

"Well, there usually is," said the man apologetically, "but you see we all ben down the commissioner’s office trying to get our rights."

"Your rights?" said Romayne faintly, wishing she had said nothing to the man, and reproaching herself for giving him opportunity to talk with her. Isabel Worrell would never have done that. It was because she was not accustomed to riding in taxis.

"Yes, miss," said the man as if he had just been looking for someone to whom he could tell his troubles. "You see, us fellers has pay fifteen dollars a week to the commissioner to get our licenses, and we ben herin’ there’s a guy in the city ben makin’ it hot fer everybody what’s in this here graft game, so jest kinda got together and decided we’d tell the commissioner we was going to give evidence ‘gainst him he didn’t do somepin about it. So we went together, a gang of us, an’ we give him a line of talk, and wddaya think? He give us money back! Sorry to keep ya waitin’, miss, but you see how ‘twas. I jest had to have that money. I got a sick kid, and she has to go to the hospital fer an operation, an’ I needed that money."

Romayne was all sympathy now. She asked questions about the child and promised to send her a doll and a picture book. How much trouble there was in the world, and she had been fretting for years just because she had to make over her dresses and they couldn’t ride in taxis. And now money had come to the Ransoms, but here were the Judsons, and the taxi drivers, and a lot of other poor people who were still in trouble. It really spoiled much of her own pleasure in her good fortune to know that there were so many people in such deep trouble. And it all seemed to be the fault of a few rich politicians who were trying to get richer than anybody else without doing anything. At least that was the way it looked. Or, perhaps, it was the fault of the people who voted to put men who would do such things into these offices of trust. Fancy a commissioner trying to live off a poor taxi driver whose little girl was waiting to have a much-needed operation until her father could scrape the money together to pay the doctor and the hospital! Something ought to be done about it. She meant to ask Lawrence and Father to start at once organizing some kind of a society to look into these things. They could do it. Now that they were going to have a little money, they would have a real chance to do good in the world.

She gave the driver a generous tip, took down his address, and promised not to forget the doll. Then the car drew up in front of the old respectable brownstone house into which they had moved but the month before.

She glanced up at the house with a thrill of pride and pleasure. To think that was their home after all these years in a little cramped apartment! And she was presently to have a good sum of money put into her hands with which to furnish it with fine old furniture such as belonged in a respectable old family mansion. Of course, it wasn’t one of the newer houses. But it had an air of ancient grandeur about it that pleased her. She liked the high ceilings and the big rooms.

As she looked toward the front windows where now her father had his office, she saw the curtain stir and a hand draw back. It must be her father had come home and he would be coming to the door to meet her!

She paid the taxi fare and hurried up the steps, wondering what Father would say when he heard her story, and wouldn’t he be glad after all that she had come back? She knew he had been going to be lonesome without her in spite of all his joy in her holiday.

Inside that stately old front parlor thick rough silk curtained the windows in a deep amber shade. A great walnut roll-top desk occupied the center of the room. In the wall opposite the hall archway was set an old mantel with cupboards on each side, and two tall graceful urns of alabaster stood upon the mantel. A large old Kerminshah rug, worn but still beautiful, in rose and amber covered the floor. A few walnut chairs and a desk chair completed the furnishings. On the desk were several specimens of ore and some tubes of oil in various stages of refinement.

"Oh gee!" said a thick-set youth in knickerbockers and golf stockings, peering from between the curtains. "That girl’s come back! I thought you said she was safe in Jersey for a week! Now what are we going to do? She’ll be in here in a minute."

"We’re going to do just what we planned to do, Chris," said a quiet, grave young man in a plain business suit with a face that had a rugged look of determined strength about it.

"But—why say—Sherwood—she’s a peach of a girl! I went to school with her."

"Sorry for the girl, Chris, but it can’t be helped! This is the only time this could be done, and the stage is set. We can’t afford to let the opportunity slip. We may never get it again. We’re not fighting for one person’s feelings, kid! This is righteousness! You get into your corner, Chris, and let me manage this thing."

"But, Sherrey, you can’t——"

There was the sound of a key turning in the lock, and a lifted hand of caution silenced the youth at the window.

The other three men, two of them in policeman’s garb, and one a plainclothes man, showed no interest in the incident save by quick, alert gleams of the eye. They maintained a grave aloof bearing and seemed to study to obliterate themselves as far as possible from the scene. Their time of action was not yet come.

The man they called Sherwood was seated just inside the arch from the hallway.

Romayne flung open the door and stepped inside, closing it after her before she saw him. Then she took a step forward, and all the others were visible to her view, not excepting her old schoolmate, who had turned his back to the room in the hope of not being recognized.

The girl stood still for a moment, eyeing each of the five men questioningly, then turned toward the young man who obviously dominated the scene.

"Where is my father?" she asked coldly, as if she felt he were somehow to blame for the presence of these uniformed men.

"That is what we hoped you might be able to tell us, Miss Ransom," said Sherwood courteously. He had risen as she entered the doorway.

She looked around at them intently once more.

"Then if my father has not been here," she asked crisply, "how did you get in here?"

For just an instant she stood facing the five men, and then she stepped quickly over to the desk and laid her hand on the telephone.

Just as quickly another hand, firm and strong and determined, was laid upon hers, and the man called Sherwood looked sternly down at her.

"I’m sorry, Miss Ransom, but we can’t let you do that—not now."