Coming Through the Rye

by Grace Livingston Hill

  “Frannie, why do you put that old rouge on your cheeks? I think you look a lot better without it. She didn’t have any on. She just had her skin. It looked more real. I don’t like to look at you when you get your mouth all red and kind of pointed like that and so white around your nose. You look like one of those false faces you see at Halloween. I don’t feel like kissing you when you look like that.”

  “Well, there’s others that do,” preened Frances self-consciously, with a little unholy laugh her sister did not understand. “Oh, if you aren’t a scream, Wilanna! Wait another year till you grow up, if I won’t have piles of fun telling you how silly you were! Why, baby, I shouldn’t be considered dressed if I didn’t have on powder and rouge. Your teacher probably does it, too, when she really goes out to parties and things. She didn’t bother to waste it on us, that’s all. You can see by her clothes there’s some class to her. But I don’t think she has very good taste, myself. If I could dress like her, I’d go to a real beauty parlor every day of my life and get my face done and a wave. Her hair looked almost like natural curls. I don’t think it looks neat all irregular like that. If I had hair like that, I’d get a bob—that’s what I’d do.”

  “Oh, Frannie, I thought her hair was lovely!” There were signs of tears once more.

  “There, baby! I guess it was all right, only she probably gets it fixed up when she goes to dances and things.”

  Frances was arraying herself in a flimsy apricot-colored crepe de chine dress with an apron of flimsy yellow lace and a scarf going around her throat and over one shoulder, surmounted by a bright red silk rose where it crossed. She was very busy smoothing down her skirt and plastering a half moon of dark, slick hair out over each cheek as far as the cheekbones.

  The little girl surveyed her half in admiration, half in trouble.

  “My, but you look pretty, Frannie! But I can’t think you oughtta go t’night, with Papa in jail. It don’t seem right!”

  Frances wheeled about upon her.

  “Well, I gotta, Willie! What I gonta tell Larry when he comes? Say I can’t go to the dance and the movies and take a car ride because my papa’s in jail fer murdering a woman getting drunk? Would you like to tell a young man that? And such a classy young fella as Larry? Why, Willie, he ain’t like the other fellas. He’s polite and handsome, and he has just rolls of money. He’s free with it, too. I’m going to get him to get a whole box of chocolates for me tonight, and I’ll bring them home to you, all except one or two pieces I have to eat for politeness, you know. Say, Wilanna, can you shift yerself a little farther over on the other side of the bed? I wantta get out my hat, and these springs sag so in the middle that the box won’t budge. That’s it. Now I have it. I hope it ain’t mashed!”

  Frances pulled out a tiny hat of silver, faced with a dash of flame of color. It did not hurt the hat for her that it was a bargain on account of a slight spot of tarnish on one side. It was what she called a “classy” hat. She fitted it carefully on before the unflattering mirror and then sat down at the front window to watch for signs of her escort.

  “He’s coming in a car,” she told her sister over her shoulder. “It’s a car he’s thinking of buying. Just think of me going out with a young man to try a car! Wilanna, wouldn’t it be great if we’d have a car someday?”

  “I’d rather have Papa out of jail!” wailed Wilanna, and she buried her face in her limp little pillow.

  “Well, nat’ally, baby, we all would. Disgrace isn’t the pleasantest thing in the world, but I’m going to forget it for one night. I’m going to have the time of my life tonight. But I hope it won’t be the last time either. Larry seems to be real fond of me.”

  “Where do you go when you go out, Frances? What do you do all the time?”

  “Go? Oh, lotsa places. Ride in the park, and then away off on the hills. There’s a drive they call Lovers’ Lane, with the trees overhead, and it’s real dark, and there’s a little brook across the road, and sometimes we park the car—oh, you wouldn’t understand, baby! Wait till you grow up. Then we go to a roadhouse and dance and have a supper. That’s the kind of a fella Larry is. He never skimps things. We’re going to the whole show tonight, he says, and then some. There’s a place where they have dancing and a dandy orchestra, and they have suppers—they say the suppers are great, and only real refined people go there. Society people, you know, that is, kind of select people. It was a private entrance. You wouldn’t know there was such a place when you go in. It just seems like it was some sort of rooming house. It’s way down Vinegar Lane, just small houses there, but you go to this man’s room—he’s an awful rich fella and he just does this fer fun—I forget what his name is—and when you get into the room, it’s just a common room with a bureau and chairs and things, and you open a door into a closet or something, and that opens into another hall you didn’t know was there, and it leads to a secret room in between buildings! They say it’s a wonderful place, with carpets and pictures and soft chairs and lots of lights and flowers, and they have a big dining room, too. I’ve been dying to go there for weeks, ever since Gladys and Vivian told me about it. Heaps of the girls have been. I think we’re going there tonight. You see, Larry has a pull with the man that owns it, and he’s given Larry a ticket to get in. Only fellas with tickets can get in—and girls, of course. Every fella takes a girl.”

  “Oh Frannie,” broke in the little girl. “They don’t have wine there, do they? I don’t want you to drink wine, Frannie. Please, Frannie!”

  “Oh, now stop being a goose, Wilanna! They just have refined kinds of wine there, not the kind Papa drinks. Why everybody drinks refined kinds of wine now—not whiskey, of course—”

  “It’s against the law,” wailed Wilanna. “The teacher in school said you got arrested if you bought it or sold it, and my Sunday school teacher, too, she said it was wicked to be a bootlegger.”

  “Oh, baby! You silly thing! These people are not bootleggers; they are just classy society people. Why, Willie, they are real high-up people, these people. Some of the government folks, you know, that make the laws. Nothing couldn’t arrest them, you know, and anyhow, of course they know what the law is, and they wouldn’t break their own laws, would they?”

  “I s’pose not,” admitted the little girl hesitatingly. “But, Sister, I’m afraid—”

  “Oh, now stop that nonsense! Listen, Wilanna, I want you to be a real good girl and not cry if I havta go before Mamma comes. You see I have a special reason for wanting to tonight. It’s about Papa. It’s to help Papa. Now, will you be good?”

  Wilanna beamed.

  “What is it, Frannie? Tell me quick. I’m afraid you’ll have to go before you tell me. Will it get him out of jail?”

  “Will you promise not to cry? Not to let anybody know you’re alone in the house when Larry comes?”

  “I promise,” said Wilanna eagerly.

  “Well, you see, if I can get Larry to go to that place tonight, I might meet a high-up officer-in-the-government man, and if I do, I’ve got a real good story made up about Papa, and I’m going to beg him to help Papa. That’s why I put on this dress and hat, Baby, so he would like me and I could get to sit out a dance with him and talk about it.”

  “Oh, Frannie, how wonderful!” The little girl’s face was bright through her tears. “And you’ll tell him our father wouldn’t drink if they would just close up those saloons, like the law says they must, won’t you? You’ll tell him how down at Booker’s corner they go in the back door and pretend like it’s closed in front, and how Jimsey’s is running all the time in the back. You will, won’t you, Frannie?”

  “Oh, I guess so,” said Frances impatiently, her face against the windowpane. “I don’t see why Larry doesn’t come! It’s half-past eight now. Don’t say anything to Mamma about where I was going. You tell her I’ve gone out to see if I can’t get a friend of mine to speak a word for Papa.”

  “I will,” promised Wilanna willingly, “but why don’t you want her to know all a
bout that man and his secret room and everything? I think it’s a lovely idea.”

  “Well, I wantta surprise her, Baby. Now, you lie still. I’m going downstairs. I think I hear someone at the door. Maybe it’s Larry. He don’t like to be kept waiting. You won’t mind my going before Mamma comes, will you?”

  “No, I’ll just lie still and hold God’s hand like Miss Ransom said today to do. She said when I felt pain in my back to do that—it would help—and I tried it once, and I think it did. Oh, I wish you liked her! I think she’s so sweet!”

  “Oh, sure, I liked her. She’s kind of high and mighty, but she’s all right. Now I’m going, good night.”

  Frances slipped down the stairs breezily and opened the front door, but it was not the young man she expected who stood on the front steps. Instead it was three very-much-excited girls. They crowded into the room without noticing the lack of cordiality on Frances’s part, and all began talking in loud tones at once.

  “Oh, Fran! Have you heard?”

  “Say, Juddie, when did you hear from Larry?”

  “We’re up against it, old girl! Larry’s arrested!”

  “Whaddya mean, arrested?” shouted Frances excitedly. “What for? Who gave you a line like that?”

  “It’s true, Frannie. Larry’s arrested. It’s all over our crowd. I’m not giving you any line. It’s the straight truth. They got him.”

  “I always knew that Lawrence Ransom was too soft for our crowd! He didn’t know the ropes,” said a bold girl with black eyes and hair that looked as if it were cut with a bowl. She was chewing gum vigorously.

  “Ransom!” said Francis suddenly. “Was that his name? I always thought you called him Rawson.”

  “No, it was Ransom. Lawrence Ransom. He lives up on Clinton Avenue with the swells. Don’t you know who he is? His father’s thick with Judge Freeman, and our ‘Towney’ who gives us the suppers. What’s eating you, Fran? You look as if you’d seen a ghost.”

  “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking. Wilanna has a Sunday school teacher by that name. She was here this afternoon to see her. But it can’t be any relation of his, of course.”

  “He’s got a sister,” put in the girl they called Vivian. “I saw her once. She’s real stuck up. Doesn’t run with our crowd. She’s in with the Worrells and Freemans. Thinks nothing is good enough for her but the millionaires. I guess she don’t know how speedy her brother is. That’s the trouble with him—he’s soft. But I guess he’ll get his now.”

  Frances’s face blanched. Two arrests in a day was almost too much for her small nerves.

  “Why’ncha explain, Viv? I don’t think that’s smart. How’d he get arrested?”

  “Oh, that Sherwood bunch is around again, hot trail fer trouble. They rounded up Merty, and she had to run all the girls off in taxis quick. They say there’s nothing going on tonight. Even the roadhouse is quiet. Got pink candles on the tables and advertising a family dinner, with wholesome movies afterward.”

  “But Larry,” faltered Frances, “why should they get Larry?’

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” said Sybil crossly. “What difference does it make? We lose our fun anyhow, and that’s enough. I’m sick a this town. I’m going to N’York, where you c’n have a real time! These folks here are run by a bunch of old maids and Sunday school teachers. You girls all better come with me. We’ll rent a house fer ourselves and do the town. Say, Fran, your father and mother ain’t here? D’ya mind if I smoke? I’m near dead fer a smoke. It’s ridiculous they let the boys smoke in the street and won’t let us.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t, Syb,” said Frances in a panic. “Mamma might come in any minute, and besides, Wilanna’s upstairs. She’ll smell it and tell.”

  “I should worry,” said Sybil, taking a box of cigarettes out of her pocket, lighting one, and throwing the match down on the carpet carelessly.

  Frances stooped and picked it up nervously.

  “I wish you wouldn’t, Syb. Mamma don’t like it. She’ll stop my going out nights if she sees you smoking. She don’t know I smoke. You haven’t any right to spoil all my good times. Go outside if you wantta smoke.”

  “Rats!” said Sybil inelegantly. “If you’ve got a backward number like that fer a mother, you better clear out. That’s what I’m going to do. I’ll take you along if you won’t be a sissy. But you’ve got to get some money together first. It’ll be fifty-fifty if you go with me. I mean to live!”

  “Hush!” said Frances suddenly. “Mamma’s coming!” She threw up the window quickly and, snatching Sybil’s cigarette, flung it out on the sidewalk as Mrs. Judson opened the front door and came in.

  She was a heavy woman with a strong tread, and creases of habitual anxiety on her broad, sagging face. She had a dreary sorrow in her eyes as she looked around on the girls with their gaudy little frocks, her own daughter in their midst. Her sad, keen eyes searched her daughter’s face.

  Frances had snatched off the little silver hat with its nasturtium facing and was swinging it nervously in her hand.

  “I was just coming out to hunt you, Mamma,” she explained, looking apologetically down at her bright dress.

  “H’m! I don’t know as you had any call to go out in a rig like that to hunt fer me!” said her mother witheringly.

  She sat down heavily in the nearest chair, however, as though she was too weary to pursue the subject further. She drew out two long black-headed hatpins and removed her rusty black hat, smoothing her graying hair with a work-roughened hand. Frances hoped the girls had not noticed how old-fashioned her mother was. She cast a furtive glance at Sybil chewing away at her gum indifferently. She half-expected Sybil to be angry about the cigarette. Sybil was considered a sort of leader in their set. She wondered tremulously what her mother would do in case Sybil broke forth into one of her tirades.

  But Mrs. Judson did not seem to have noticed any of the girls, or to realize which girls they were. She looked about on them drearily, or rather over them, and continued to talk to her daughter.

  “Well, I’ve been to see the lawyer,” she said in that same sort of hopeless voice. “He says there ain’t much hope ‘ithout yer father is willing t’turn state’s evidence an’ help the Sherwood bunch. He says they’ve got things in their own hands fer a while now, till the whiskey folks can get organized. He says they’ve got to lay low, and the Sherwood gang has some men who are helping them that’ll do a good turn fer your father if he’ll just say where he got the liquor.”

  She paused and looked impersonally around on the gum-chewing group.

  “I ben to see your father, too,” she went on, “an’ he says he’ll do it. He ain’t got no compunctions about tellin’ where he got it—they weren’t no friends of his’n. He seems real sorry—yer father!”

  She sat stolidly a moment, gazing off at nothing, her loose, sorrowful cheeks sagging more than usual, the little pouch of flesh under her chin quivering. Then two large slow tears most unexpectedly rolled out and down her face. They looked as out of place as a steamroller going down a church aisle. She was not the kind of woman who cried. One didn’t know that she had tears. She seemed unaware that she was weeping. She sat a moment longer, looking into space across the little tawdry room with its golden oak furniture and its portraits, and then she rose heavily, gathered her two old-fashioned hatpins and her rusty hat, and trod wearily out of the room and up the stairs.

  The four girls sat still for a moment, even their jaws arrested in their regular rhythm, in a strange new embarrassment. Was it possible there had been a kind of dignity in that fat, homely, stolid woman? Had she ever been a pretty girl with bright frocks, going out with the boys? And it had come to this!

  Would it ever end in something like this with any of them?

  There was a stillness in the room for a moment while they turned this new idea over in what they had left of a mind. Then suddenly they all four started into alert guarded attitudes, as a loud knock sounded on the door!

  Chapter 5

 
The startled silence lasted until Mrs. Judson came heavily to the top of the stairs and called, “Frances! Why don’t you open that door?”

  The stentorian voice seemed at once to lay bare the four shamed girls sitting in breathless silence, seemed to reveal to the one outside the door that they had been afraid to open it. Just what they were afraid of they did not quite know, only that there had been so many unforeseen happenings, so many startling events during that day that they hardly knew what was coming next. Then, too, there was in their countenances a confession of the many things in their lives that they would not care to have revealed. And admission, to themselves at least, that they were open to unpleasant investigation as well as the ones who had been that day arrested.

  Not that there was any such open admission. Oh no. Each girl straightened her frills and ruffled her bob and went on chewing indifferently as though that knock were nothing to her.

  Frances hurried into the hall with a belated and breathless “Oh, yes’m. Did somebody knock? I didn’t notice!”

  She made a time wrestling with the latch, although her mother had not locked the door. Then she opened it a crack with her foot behind it and looked out, chewing her gum nervously, with an assumed indifference.

  A man stood outside with some papers in his hand, which he seemed to have been trying to read by the fitful light of the street. He looked up at Frances and asked sharply, “Is Mr. Lawrence Ransom here?”

  Francis was past master in delaying on attack.

  “Mr. Who?” she asked stupidly.

  “Mr. Ransom—Mr. Lawrence Ransom. I was told I would find him here.”

  “This is Judsons’,” stated Frances with finality. “I don’t know any Mr. Ransom.”

  “You’re Frances Judson, aren’t you?”