Coming Through the Rye (34 page)

“But Mother, she had great recommendations! Some minister at home, I forget who. Ask Gloria, she knows!”

“Oh yes, Mrs. Whitman,” put in Alida pacifically. “We all thought her quite nice. I'm sure you will find her a good worker. She was awfully conscientious in school and all that, and I wouldn't like you to dismiss her just for what I said. I really don't know much about it, and I used to like her well enough myself. I've only told you what I've heard.”

“You were quite right, dear,” began Mrs. Whitman.

“But it's not fair, Mother,” declared Jack hotly. “She's a peach of a girl. Wait till you know her.”

Mrs. Whitman laughed indulgently.

“If you feel that way about her, I certainly shall send her flying, Jack. You always do lose your head over every new girl. Now take Alida down to breakfast. I've got to sign my letters before I can come.”

Romayne, with her face as white as the little morning frock she was wearing, and her head held high, came out of the writing room with the letters and handed them to her employer.

“Here are your letters, Mrs. Whitman,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “And it will not be necessary for you to send me away. I should quite prefer to go if I am not wanted. Indeed, I could not think of remaining after what I could not help overhearing just now. But I want you to know that I have a good reference from Dr. Stephens, who has known me well, and that I am not without friends who can tell you what I am, if you care to inquire.”

Romayne was trembling by the time she had finished this speech, but the older woman only looked at her coldly, looking at each address before she replied.

“I have not decided what I shall do about it yet,” she answered, as if that ended the matter for the time. “There letters are very nicely done.”

“But I have decided,” said Romayne firmly. “I could not think of staying after what has been said—”

Mrs. Whitman's glances were like icicles. They made one shiver.

“You engaged to come to me for the season, did you not? Then you are bound to stay as long as I want you. I haven't decided yet what I shall do, but you will continue your service until I give you further notice. I will be in the writing room at eleven to dictate some more letters. Be on time, please. I don't like to be delayed. And as for anything that may happen here, kindly remember that this is not a social engagement for you!”

She walked away then, leaving Romayne stranded, crimson with insult, angry and helpless.

As soon as she could get control of her muscles, she turned and fled up to her room and locked the door. She walked to the window and looked out across the mountains with the morning sun touching their tops and the glint of the lake in the distance. It had all been wonderful and glorious a few minutes before when she left her room to go down to breakfast. Now it was a blank of mingled colors blended by her tears. Her heart was giving great jerks of pain as if it were trying to come out and get away, and she felt weak and sick. She dropped into a chair and put her head upon the windowsill, and her soul cried out to God in her loneliness and anguish.

A servant came to the door with a breakfast tray, but Romayne sent her away. She did not want any breakfast.

Gloria came after a while with a message from Jack. He wanted her to come down and go for a horseback ride. He had had some horses sent over.

Romayne, white and dry-eyed because she seemed not to have the strength to cry about the terrible blow she had received, finally opened the door to Gloria, her head held up, her face haggard in its anguish. Gloria, bribed by Jack to carry his message, was touched on her own account and quite unbent to the little secretary.

“Don't be a fool,” she said pleasantly. “Take all the good times you can get. Jack is crazy to take you riding, and you'll feel saner when you get back, and things won't look half so gloomy. I'm sorry they said things about you, but I don't think anybody meant to be mean. Alida was just telling me that you were an awfully nice little thing in school and very smart. I'm sure she didn't mean a thing. So don't mind her. She isn't going to be here long anyway, only a week. I don't care for her much myself, but Papa has business relations with her uncle, and she had to come. But don't mind her. Do eat your breakfast and go to ride.”

“Oh, I couldn't possibly,” said Romayne with tightly compressed lips. “And I'm sure your mother would not wish it. Please thank your brother and tell him I cannot go.”

When Gloria went away and left her to herself again, she tried to set her tempestuous thoughts in array and know what to do, but somehow the hurt in her heart was so great that she could not think consecutively. So that was what people were saying of her father! All the years of his honored citizenship, all the fatherhood of him, and the kindliness of him, all the respect that had been his forever until this happened, counted for nothing against that great sin of his! And the most astonishing thing about it was that the people who were condemning him had been his tempters and partners in it. But he had been caught in the act, and they had not. That was the difference. No, there was one other difference: He was forgiven, and they were not. His sin was forever covered by the blood of the Savior who died to take his place, and their sin was not even acknowledged by them.

Well, must she bear this? And must she stay in a house where her brother was known to be involved in sin, and a fugitive from justice, where she herself was suspected of being a criminal also?

Was she really bound in any way to remain?

And yet if she went, where could she go? Who would take her if she was turned out of this place for a reason like this? Was there anyone in the wide world who could help her with this taint upon her? Strangely, at that instant came a memory of the promise that Evan Sherwood had drawn from her, that she would call upon him for help if at any time she was in need, yet she put the idea from her as impossible and went on with her sad thoughts.

There was that nice Aunty Patty, but she, too, had failed—forgotten her. There was Chris. But she could not marry him. Even in her desperate situation she knew she never could.

Desperate thoughts flitted through her mind—of wishing she might fall over a precipice or drown in the lake—but she knew they were unworthy and put them aside. No, she had told Chris that God wanted her to be in this situation. He had put her on her own. Here she was, and she must do what God had set her to do, yet how could she?

Then in the midst of her trouble, a servant tapped on the door and told her that Mrs. Whitman wished to see her at once.

Mrs. Whitman was sitting at her telephone desk as if nothing had happened when Romayne entered. She looked up and signed to the girl to sit down.

“There is something I wish to say to you,” she said crisply. “You knew all this about yourself when you came here, didn't you? You knew your father was a bootlegger and your brother was an escaped criminal, didn't you, before you heard Miss Freeman tell me so?”

She paused and looked Romayne through and through. Her words were like balls of lead that hit her in the heart. She seemed to have no power to resent them or deny. They were true, too true, but they were cruelly put.

“I want to ask you a question,” went on the woman coolly, judicially. “Did you want to keep that from me? Were you intending to deceive me about it?”

“No,” said Romayne, trying to speak steadily. “I did not think that had anything to do with my getting a position. I did not think you were hiring my father and my brother.”

“Exactly,” said Whitman, “then why should it have anything to do with it now?”

Romayne hesitated for an answer.

“Because,” she said, looking up with her sad, clear eyes full on her employer, “you have insinuated that it had to do with my character also. And because, though some of what you have said about them was true, it was not all true, and not in the way that it was said. My father was a dear father to me, and I did not know what was going on until it was over. I know things about his life before this happened that make it impossible for me to stay where people will deliberately say such things to hurt me.”

“Yet you acknowledge that the general facts are true, and you must know that people hold these opinions about them. You have got those facts to face. I don't see that you should be angry at people for thinking the natural thing about them. It is what you probably would do if you were in their place. And it would be very foolish for you to give up a good position just because your feelings were hurt. People in business are not supposed to have feelings. If you expect to be a businesswoman, you must be blind to personal hurts. You do not come here as a person, but to render a service for which you are paid. Outside of service hours your life is your own. We are not purchasing that, but while you are working, you are not supposed to see or feel slights of any sort. You are not here for social and personal reasons. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” said Romayne, “I see what you mean, but you could not buy the best work that I can do in such a way. It would be work without any soul. I could not stay where I was not trusted.”

“I did not say I do not trust you! I have just been talking with Dr. Stephens. I understand that you are thoroughly trustworthy, and I understand that your people were thoroughly respectable. It seems so until recently. Now, if you please, we will begin our work.”

When Romayne finished that hour's work, she was more worn out than she remembered ever to have been before. She gathered up her papers as she was about to leave the room.

“Mrs. Whitman,” she said gently, yet with a certain reserve about her voice that demanded respect, “I shall have to think it over before I decide whether I can stay with you any longer or not, but there is one thing I must ask. I would like to eat my meals with the servants, please, or in my room. If I am an outcast, I surely do not have to be put where I shall be constantly reminded of it.”

Mrs. Whitman eyed her thoughtfully for a moment.

“There will be guests here tonight for dinner and you are needed to fill out the couples, Gloria tells me. You will have to be at the dinner table tonight; it is a part of your duties. Take it as a duty and not as a social function if you please. You are being paid for it. You can do as you like about lunch.”

What Romayne pleased to do was to go without lunch.

She went to her room, and after finishing the letters she had taken down, she went to sleep. She did not wake up until barely time for dinner, and her eyes were sad with dark circles underneath as she dressed hastily for the hateful dinner.

“I will go down tonight,” she said to herself, “but I will not go again. There must be something else that I can do, somewhere. There will be drinking, and how can I ever get through it! I shall see the scorn in Alida's eyes every time I look up!”

But at the last minute she went downstairs, dressed in her pretty black evening dress and looking slender and lovely and most attractive. Just as she was being introduced to a stranger who was to take her in to dinner, in walked Kearney Krupper in evening clothes, and very much at home. He had arrived but a few minutes before, and they all greeted him jovially. “Hello, Kearney! Come at last!”

K
earney Krupper was placed across the table from Romayne at dinner, and he did nothing but stare unpleasantly at her from the time that they were seated. Whenever she lifted her eyes in his direction, his eyes were upon her, and their expression was not good to see. It was as if he were trying to disconcert her. There was something baleful, menacing, in his look that frightened her.

In vain she tried to put aside the feeling, to tell herself she was merely nervous about him. The feeling grew upon her until it seemed that she would have to scream and run from the table.

Everybody around her was drinking. The wine flowed freely. The young man by her side was a simple-minded creature who attempted to show Romayne that wine was good and she should learn to like it. His mentality was a light thing, like froth, and it was difficult to keep up a semblance of conversation with him, yet the eye of her employer was upon her, and for pride's sake, Romayne did not wish to appear noticeable. She was sure that Mrs. Whitman was beginning to notice Kearney Krupper's intent sneer at her, and she felt the eyes of her old friend Alida upon her from farther down the table. Her position became more and more unbearable. As the meal slowly neared its close, the talk drifted more merrily to general conversation. In this moment of release from her partner's babblings, she found herself praying softly.

Oh, God! Help me hold out. Help me hold out till I can get away!

At last the awful ordeal was over, and as Romayne arose, she resolved in her heart that never again would she be placed in such a position in that household. When the morning dawned, she would take her suitcase in her hand and go down that mountain on foot. She was done with being a social secretary. She would get a good, honest job and be her own mistress, or she would starve. But she would get out of this awful place, come what might.

She watched her chance to slip away as the company broke into little groups, but when she looked up, Kearney Krupper was just ahead of her, looking into her eyes with a leer.

In a panic she turned abruptly round and fled by way of the back balcony, which overlooked the precipice. She had always avoided that at night. It looked so dark and terrible and made her shudder to look down, but now its black depths seemed almost friendly as she flew along and groped for the servants' staircase in the darkened hall. She could hear footsteps behind her and knew that they were Kearney Krupper's.

Dizzy with fear, she mounted the stairs, groped again, for the servants' hall was in darkness, and found her way at last to the door that she knew opened into the hall close to the door of her own room.