Coming Through the Rye

by Grace Livingston Hill

“Now Jack, don’t you go to spoiling her, or Mamma will have it in for you when she comes. She must have a secretary this winter, and I want the honor of having provided her. It will make my life a lot more pleasant if she’s of my picking. And you let this girl alone, and don’t turn her head. She’ll be falling in love with you next, and then good-bye secretary, for Mamma won’t stand for any of your nonsense with the servants.”

  “Might fall in love with worse,” stated Jack languidly. “She’s a peach, Glory—really she is. It’s a shame to make her into a secretary. I’m half a mind to marry her!”

  “You try it,” flashed his sister, “and see what Papa will say! He doesn’t intend you to marry that way. There’s enough causes for excuses in the family now without marrying any more.”

  “There’s worse I could hold up to him as an alternative if I wanted to that would make him beg me on his knees to marry her.”

  “If you’re going to talk that way, Jack Whitman, I’ll send her flying down the mountain this minute,” threatened Gloria, “and I mean it!”

  “Go to it if you like! I can follow, can’t I? That never did work with me. If you keep this up, I will take an interest in her.”

  Gloria studied him a minute with thoughtful gaze and knew that he was right.

  “Oh, of course I know you’re only kidding,” she said politically with a smile. “I was just reminding you, for she is a striking girl and no mistake. I wonder where she got her clothes? She certainly has good taste. I’m going to let her come to the party next Saturday night if Harriet doesn’t come, and you may dance with her if you’ll promise not to make yourself conspicuous.”

  “She doesn’t dance,” said Jack glumly. “I asked her. She said her father and mother didn’t approve of it.”

  “Fancy!” laughed Gloria derisively. “She’s about a hundred years behind the times! Or is it more than that? Well, don’t worry. I’ll make her. I’ll tell her it’s a part of her duties as social secretary.”

  “Don’t you bully her, Gloria—I won’t have it!”

  “No, I won’t, Jackie,” laughed his sister. “Trust me. I can work it.”

  But Gloria found to her surprise that she could not work it quite so easily. There were some things that Romayne, docile as she was in other ways, simply would not do. Romayne looked at her with her great eyes wide with unshed tears.

  “Miss Whitman, I can’t do it,” she said. “My father has just died, and I’ve been through a great deal of trouble, and even if I knew how or cared to dance, I wouldn’t feel like doing it. I did not know that a secretary’s duties involved such things, and if you feel that it does, I would rather go back to the city and let you get someone else, for I do not feel I can do it. I would much rather not be downstairs at the party.”

  Gloria Whitman looked at her curiously, searching for a reason.

  “You certainly are a strange girl!” she laughed. “Well, have it your own way.”

  Yet when Gloria came to think about it, she was almost glad that Romayne’s decision had been to keep out of the social affairs, for Romayne was too attractive for a mere secretary, and more than once Gloria had caught the glances of the young man who was supposed to be her own special property just then, stealing toward Romayne. Gloria Whitman liked her all the better that she did not try to be a rival.

  The clear mountain days passed, and the sweet air and sunshine stole into Romayne’s heart, healing the hurt and helping her to lay aside the fear and the burdens she had been bearing so many days.

  She began to think about writing to her friends back in the city and letting them know how she fared. Not that she thought it mattered much to anybody except Chris. Poor Chris! She had forgotten him entirely, and he had been so faithful! She must let him know she was safe now and he need not worry over her anymore.

  There really was only one thing about her new position that troubled her, and that at times was very hard for her to endure. She found that it was almost unbearable to have so much drinking going on around her. Not only because it was something she had been trained to feel was both common and wrong, but because it kept constantly before her mind the shame through which she had been passing. These people were the kind who had helped her father to sin and dragged her brother into what she could not help feeling was degradation. They drank partly to assert their right to do so, against the law of the land and the protest of a few fanatics—as they called them—who were trying to force everybody to do as they did. They drank on all occasions. Highballs and cocktails were ever being passed. Flasks were the order of the day upon all rides and picnics. It was everywhere, and apparently all their kind used it. They drank when they were hot and when they were cold, when they were gray and when they were sad. Sometimes their high, excited voices and flushed faces made Romayne turn sadly away and feel that she could not possibly spend her days among people who were so utterly different from what she wanted to be.

  They laughed at her good-naturedly when she continued to decline it, called her “Miss Volstead,” with a covert sneer in the end of the tone, but always pleasantly. It did not matter to them what their social secretary thought, of course. She was just odd—that was all. They let her go her way.

  She usually went to her room after dinner and avoided the evenings of merry-making, but sometimes even at dinner she felt uncomfortable at the intimate edge Jack Whitman gave to the tone of his conversation, and wished she were anywhere else as the tongues were loosened with the frequent glasses and stories were told that went over the line of decency and good breeding as she had been taught to consider it. Always when this happened, she drew aloof from everybody and slipped away as soon as she could.

  Aside from these things, her life was pleasant.

  Mrs. Whitman had not yet appeared on the scene, though it was rumored she was coming the following week.

  There was just enough work to keep her pleasantly busy without being strenuous. A large packet of mail to be attended to under the direction of Gloria, several big boxes of envelopes to be addressed and filled with the engraved invitations for certain social functions. Boxes and boxes stood in the little office where she worked.

  “Mother wants to get all this out of the way so that your time will be free in the fall when the rush will begin,” explained Gloria. “Of course these won’t be sent out until near the time for them. Mother is on a lot of boards and committees of clubs and things, of course, and she couldn’t begin to keep up with them unless she got ahead in the summer. These are regular dates for every year, so there’s no danger of their changing: the hospital reception, the Science and Art Exhibit, and those series of Friday-night dinners and Thursday teas.”

  So Romayne worked happily away for the first two weeks, with pleasant intervals of walks and tennis and mountain-roaming whenever she seemed really to be needed to make up a party, and the days passed so smoothly that sometimes for a little while she forgot the cloud under which she was living and the anxiety over her only brother. Surely pretty soon she would hear from him. She had left her address for her mail to be forwarded. And why didn’t that nice Aunt Patty keep her promise about writing?

  Then, one morning, it was announced quite casually at the breakfast table, not at all as if it would interest her, however, that Alida Freeman, Judge Freeman’s niece, who had been a close friend of Romayne’s for a year or two at school, was to arrive at the mountain that evening.

  The color sprang to Romayne’s cheeks and a light to her eyes, and for an instant she felt a thrill of delight at the thought of meeting an old friend. Then, suddenly, there dropped down upon her a cloud of anxiety. Did Alida know about her father and brother? And what would Alida think to find her here in her present humble position?

  All that day she carried a heavy, anxious heart as she went about her work. She did not tell anyone that she knew Alida. She would wait and see.

  Chapter 23

  Early in the afternoon of the day of the primary election the Committee of the League of Taxpayers and Citi
zens were met in solemn conclave in Evan Sherwood’s office.

  “That snake Krupper is down in the Third Ward,” said one of the members. “I’ve heard it from two or three sources already. He’ll be getting in some of his funny business if we don’t forestall him. Chris, you know how to handle him pretty well; why don’t you take a couple of men and saunter down that way?”

  “Kearney Krupper left a half an hour ago!” announced a member who had just come in. “Somebody brought him a message while I was there, and he looked scared and pulled out in a hurry! Got in that yellow racer of his and hit the trail for somewhere, hard. Going at seventy-five miles an hour, I should say, when he started.”

  Evan Sherwood and Chris looked at one another significantly and simultaneously.

  “Kearny Krupper left!” said the chief in a startled voice. “That means that they are afraid of something coming out. Which way did he go?”

  “Out through the park, I think,” answered the newcomer. “Hey, Chief! What are you going to do now? You don’t imagine you’re going to catch him, do you, with that old Ford of yours? Why, man, he started half an hour or more ago, and he’s got the fastest car around here!”

  “I’m going to try!” said Evan Sherwood, seizing his hat and striding out the door.

  “Oh, I say, Sherwood,” shouted the others in chorus, bringing feet down from various resting places and making for the hall, “don’t you know you’re a mark for a possible assassin today? For pity’s sake, stay in. Where do you think you’re going anyway? The enemy will stop at nothing! We can’t elect a dead mayor! And after all this trouble, too!”

  They shouted these things after him as he disappeared down the stairs, not even waiting for the elevator.

  But Evan Sherwood and Chris Hollister were out of hearing before they finished, and the thought of the election had faded from their minds. They had more important matters now to look after.

  The committee looked uncomfortably at one another, uncertain what they ought to do.

  “That’s the only trouble with him,” stated a thin little nervous man fretfully. “He’s always going off on some tangent where you can’t follow him. If he would just stick to the matter at hand and not worry about trifles.”

  “We can follow him!” said a tall alert man. “We must! It’s our business to stop this foolhardiness. He doesn’t belong to himself now; he belongs to the people who are voting for him. He’s got to stop throwing himself open to attack this way. Johnson, isn’t your car down there? We’ll at least have to follow him and see that he comes to no harm.”

  They dashed down to Johnson’s car and followed the shabby Ford ahead, just rounding a corner at breakneck speed in the midst of traffic.

  “Now, just look at that!” said the tall man, pointing to the car they were pursuing. “That’s the way he does! If anybody sees him, they’ll jack him up for not keeping the traffic laws!”

  “This isn’t the day to begin to criticize our chief!” said Johnson grimly, putting his foot on the gas and shooting around the corner on two wheels. “Our job is to protect him!”

  The tall man gripped the side of the car. He had heard how easily a roadster was upset. Cautious, by nature, with an equally cautious wife, he did not drive a car himself.

  They rounded another corner and shot into a straight road, Johnson hurling insults at all the drivers he passed.

  “Oh, drive that car off the road! Go out in a field and practice! Do you call that driving?”

  The tall man wished he had never suggested following the chief. A collision seemed imminent, yet, as by a miracle, they went on, threading their perilous way amid the traffic.

  They were gaining on the shabby Ford, though it held its own in a rakish, persistent way. Three times Johnson attempted to get ahead that he might slow down and stop it, and three times was prevented by an oncoming car, or a great truck, sometimes two or three.

  Then, suddenly, without warning, the Ford slowed down and drew up at the curb in front of a vacant lot. Johnson, coming like lightning behind, had just presence of mind to curve to the left and avoid smashing into it, and then to curve to the right—barely to escape an ice-cream truck that was bearing down upon him from the front. The tall man thought the end had come, but they righted themselves, slowed down, and backed up, coming to a stop in front of the pursued at last.

  “Now, we must make him understand that he’s got to go back,” said Johnson in a low tone, and turned around to face a big fat man in overalls getting out of the shabby Ford with rheumatic deliberation and leaning down to examine one of his wheels.

  They went back to the office at a graver speed, marveling at their own stupidity, and when they reached the parking place they had left but a few moments before, there stood Sherwood’s shabby Ford in its usual spot. But when they went into the office, Sherwood and Chris had not come back.

  “Now, where the dickens have they gone? How have they gone?” inquired Johnson as he mopped his anxious brow.

  “What in the world did he want to follow Kearny Krupper for? Does he know something that he is not telling us?” asked the suspicious member of the committee. “I can’t understand why information is being withheld from us—if there is genuine information. I must confess I never liked these close-mouthed people.”

  “Well, aren’t we going to do anything about it? I think we ought to do something more about it,” said a little thin member anxiously. “We certainly can’t run any more risks with our nominee.”

  “I think we ought to stay right where we are and run this election the best we know how. That’s our job, and that’s what our chief expected of us when he left. Sherwood’s perfectly able to take care of himself, and so is Chris, and besides, Chris is with him, and that’s a whole battalion when it comes to danger.” This from a man with a fine head and a strong jaw. “Harkinson, how about going down to that Third Ward? Will you and Spreicher go and see what’s to be done? Mason, suppose you and I look in on the Sixth, and all of you phone over here to Johnson every little while with any information you have. Jones and Smythe, you take the Fourth, and the rest of you circulate around, and keep the office informed. There may be a few more Kruppers let loose if we keep our eyes open.”

  “Well, I don’t like the look of things at all,” said the suspicious one as he prepared to obey orders and went grumbling down the street to the Fourth. Smythe always suspected everything he could, and when there was nothing else to suspect, he suspected himself. He was not quite sure at that moment whether he ought to have joined that League or not, with such an erratic chief.

  The day had opened unpleasantly for Romayne.

  She had come down to breakfast, as usual, a trifle early, and stepped out on the balcony for a breath of the crisp autumn morning before going around to the end balcony, where breakfast was usually served. At the farther end of the balcony she could see Mrs. Whitman, who had arrived unexpectedly just after dinner the night before and had taken very little notice of her except to give her a sheaf of letters that she wanted answered that night. Romayne had gone at the work at once and had not seen her again until now. Neither had she yet met Alida Freeman. She knew by the sounds that came up from the great living room that Alida had arrived somewhere near midnight and was received with noisy welcome.

  Romayne was wondering as she stood watching the sunlight sifting through the feathery pines, a never-ending source of delight to her, whether this fair view from the balcony would seem as pleasant to her if she did not like her employer as it had during the weeks that were passed. While she stood so, with the sunlight glinting her hair, Jack Whitman stepped out and stood beside her talking for a moment in his usual friendly way. Then came Mrs. Whitman’s voice, halfway down the balcony, calling: “Jack, dear, will you run in and get me my blue scarf, lying on my bed?”

  Jack went at once, and Romayne, turning, saw that Mrs. Whitman was approaching slowly with Alida by her side, and that she was observing her secretary with a cold stare, as if she had just becom
e conscious of her.

  But Romayne was thinking then of Alida, and in the most natural way in the world she went forward to greet her.

  “Alida!” she said with a glad little smile. “It is nice to see someone I know.”

  But Alida had a strange look of embarrassment on her pretty face and did not offer to take the hand that Romayne put out spontaneously.

  “Why, Romayne! You here?” she said quite casually, as if Romayne might have been a favorite maid she had employed.

  There was something in the tone more than in the words, something in the strange stare more than either, that sent the color in waves over her cheek and chin and brow. She felt as if Alida had lifted her little pink manicured hand and slapped her full in the face. She had never felt more humiliated in her life. In her bewilderment she stood still, just looking at her former friend, the color receding and leaving a kind of deathly pallor.

  In the midst of it, Jack came eagerly forward with the pretty scarf in his hand, smiling at the guest and demanding to know if it wasn’t a glorious morning. Then came Mrs. Whitman’s cold voice: “Miss Ransom, you may go and bring me those letters you wrote for me last night. I wish to get them off the first thing this morning.”

  Romayne went, hastily, feeling herself dismissed from the light of day, the ready tears beginning to sting their way into her eyes in spite of her best efforts. She was glad to retreat into the room just off the balcony, where she had been working the night before and left the letters. She gathered them up hastily and waited a moment to wipe away the tears and get control of herself before she went out with them.

  While she stood there by the open window, the cold voice of Mrs. Whitman came quite clearly: “You knew my new secretary before, then, Alida?”

  “Oh yes, we went to the same school together for a time.” Alida’s tone gave the impression that the time was far back in youth, and that she merely knew Romayne by sight.

  “Do tell me about her then,” said the hostess eagerly. “We got her, you know, from an agency, and we don’t know the least thing about her. We were desperate, and Gloria had to take the first applicant that presented herself. I don’t think she even had a reference.”