Ransom (3 page)

“Rand, for pity's sake, stop talking like that, and be decent. If you think that, keep it to yourself, at least for a while. Listen! There's Father coming in now, and there's someone with him. We'll have to go down, Rand. Father will expect it.”

“Good night!” said the boy under his breath, peering down the stairs into the lighted hall. “It's that old uncle of Charmian's. Now he'll have ta stay ta dinner, and I won't get ta see Dad at all. Say, Chris, I'll slip down the back way and snitch a bite in the kitchen and then pawn my watch and get back ta school. You tell Dad I had ta catch that train and that I'll write him and explain. Say I'm sorry and all that—”

“I'll do no such thing!” said Christobel angrily. “You're not going away without Father's permission! Go on downstairs and behave yourself like a decent son of the house. Yes, Father, Rand and I are here! We're coming!” she called as she saw her father lift a tired face toward the two as they stood together at the top of the stairs.

“Aw, you!” said Randall as he moved sullenly down the stairs after his sister into the full light of the hall.

As she passed down the stairs, Christobel caught a glimpse of Marie coming furtively from the back hall with an anxious look on her face and a bunch of keys in her hand.

T
he dinner table was a stiff affair, the young people scarcely speaking except when necessary, the two men carrying on a rambling conversation about politics and the prospect of a war in Europe, both of which neither seemed much interested in. But finally, when the table was being cleared for the dessert course and the butler had for the moment left the room, the unwelcome guest disclosed the true cause for his coming.

“Hmm!” he said, clearing his throat. “I am wondering when my dear niece's will is to be read?”

“Will?” said the head of the house, lifting his eyebrows in a question. “My wife left no will.”

“No will?” said the old man, with a swag of his head in disapproval. “That makes it most awkward, doesn't it? How careless of her. Well then, just when is the estate to be divided?”

“Estate?” The younger man lifted his chin a trifle haughtily and looked at his guest as if he were an old black crow come to pick bones. “There is no estate,” he said coldly. “My wife owned no property whatsoever.”

“Oh, but surely she owned this house. She told me several times that she bought it. She said it was hers.”

“It was hers only in the sense that I bought what she selected. Charmian was absolutely penniless when I married her, and she had nothing except what I gave to her. I did not give her this house, simply because I found that she was utterly unfitted either by character or by education to manage business affairs.”

“Indeed!” said the uncle severely. “I was led to believe quite the contrary. I understood that she had been most successful in her investments. That she had an uncanny way of always knowing where to place her money and that her gains had been phenomenal.”

Mr. Kershaw lifted his head now and looked the old man steadily in the eyes, speaking more severely than Christobel had ever heard him speak to one older than himself. He was by nature a courteous man.

“I am sorry to have to inform you, Mr. Madden,” he said, “that every investment my wife ever made, and every attempt of hers to play the market, turned out to be my loss instead of her gain. My wife lost heavily in several ill-advised ventures and had so involved herself with my money that I was obliged to make good. If you wish to confirm my words, you may consult my lawyer, who is even now trying to straighten out a mess that came from her great desire to roll in wealth. I have nothing further to say in the matter.”

The butler had returned with dessert, and the baffled old man subsided into his coffee and pastry. Christobel and Randall eyed their father speculatively in the light of what he had just said. For the first time in their lives it occurred to them that their father might have had some rough sledding in his career that had always seemed to them a charmed path of success.

Gee! Was Charmian like that?
meditated young Randall. He told himself he was glad he hadn't pawned his watch. Dad might have noticed and felt hurt about it, seeing it was a good one, and his last birthday present.

But Christobel had suddenly remembered the key that was in her possession and the overheard conversation, and she was trying to plan what she should do about it. Ought she to tell her father?

An oppressive silence was beginning to settle over the table when Mr. Kershaw broke it in a businesslike tone.

“By the way, Mr. Madden, what time did you say your train was leaving? Randall and I have an errand downtown presently, and we could drop you at the station.”

“Hmm!” said the old uncle, gathering the last delicious crumb of pastry on his fork. “I didn't say. I was not altogether sure I should leave tonight. I don't know but business might detain me—” He paused and gave place for an invitation to remain as a guest of the house. Christobel and Randall exchanged quick glances of apprehension, but as if he read his children's thoughts, Mr. Kershaw looked up quickly and answered him.

“Well, whatever you say. If you prefer it, we can drop you off at your hotel instead of the station.”

The old man swallowed his mortification and decided for the station, and with relief to all, the meal was ended at last.

“I want you to get your coat and hat and come with me, Randall,” said his father in a tone that made the boy look at him with sudden apprehension. He wondered anxiously if Dad had had a letter from the school and hurried off to get his coat.

“Anyhow, we're getting rid of the old geezer,” he whispered to his sister as he passed her on the stairs. “Some sucker he is. I wonder Dad didn't pitch him out of the house. Some nerve he has, asking about a will!”

Christobel had a chance to speak to her father for just a moment as he came from his room with his coat on and his hat in his hand.

She had checked and knew that the servants were all in the kitchen at their dinner, yet she stood half hesitating, wondering whether she ought to tell him or not.

“What is it, daughter?” he asked kindly as he came into the hall and saw the trouble in her eyes. “Something you want to see me about? I won't be very long. Is it anything in particular? Will it wait?”

“Why, I guess so,” she said, looking with troubled eyes across the hall to Charmian's door. “It's just that I happened to overhear the servants talking. Maybe I was mistaken. They might have been joking, but it didn't sound like it. It seemed as if they were planning to go through her things, and—I locked her door. Was that right?”

“Certainly, that was right. I should have thought of it before. They are all practically new servants but Marie, and I never did trust her. What did they say?”

‘“I couldn't hear it all,” said Christobel in a worried tone. “They spoke of two fur coats, new ones, sable and an ermine.”

“She had no fur coats,” said the father, looking puzzled.

“I thought from what they said they had been sent up on approval. They gossiped about what you would say when you saw the bill. And they spoke about a chain of amethysts, ‘purple beads' the cook called them.”

Christobel noticed a startled look come across her father's face.

“I should have looked out for things. No telling what she—” he said and then checked himself. “I mean I'm glad you locked the door.”

“But Father,” began Christobel again, “I'm afraid Marie has another key. I saw her coming this way carrying a bunch of keys as we were going downstairs to dinner. Perhaps I ought to have told you right away, but I didn't like to before Mr. Madden.”

“Well,” said Kershaw looking troubled himself, “never mind. Suppose you just stay near and keep your eyes open while I'm gone. I'll get back as quickly as possible. I wouldn't go now, only I must get rid of this old man, and there is a matter of business I must attend to tonight, a telegram or two that will be sent—and I want Randall with me,” he added as if to explain not leaving him behind with his sister. “You sit in this room if you like and read or something. Or downstairs wherever you like, but just keep your eyes and ears open. I don't imagine they'll dare do much, not with you in the house, and perhaps not anyway.”

Christobel walked idly up and down the hall for a few minutes after they were gone. She tried to shake off the awful feeling of death that still seemed to hover about her stepmother's door. She reasoned with herself that it was silly and childish to be afraid of rooms with nobody in them, but somehow the memory of the still house of clay that had been her sharp young stepmother's would pass continually before her eyes.

Curiously she looked about her. She had seldom been in this particular apartment. She did not know the furnishings. There was a strangeness about the whole atmosphere, as if it were merely a stopping place for a momentary waiting. Not as if there had been any attempt to make it a home where a human soul had comfort and resting. Poor Father! A great pity for him swept over her. What had he had in life, anyway? Those revealing words about property that he had spoken at the table had stirred her deeply. What had he had in any of them except a channel to take his money from him? She and Randall had never been home much. Money and more money they had always been crying out for, and he had always given it freely, with only occasional troubled questions as to how it was spent. He must have been that way with Charmian, too. Charmian had always had luxury after she became Mrs. Kershaw.

Christobel found herself wondering if her father had a great deal of money. She had never thought about it before; she had always taken it for granted that the wealth had been unlimited. Yet there had been a certain oppression, a look of almost fright when she had spoken of those valuable fur coats that he all too evidently had not known about. These were hard times. People everywhere were losing money. Some of the girls had had to drop out of school at Christmas because their parents had failed and had no more money to keep them in such an expensive school. Had the great depression come anywhere near her father? Was that perhaps why her father's hair had silvered at the edges so much since the last time she had seen him?

She switched on the lights and looked around her. There was no evidence of failing fortune in the furnishings of the room, but Charmian would have seen to that. The house must come up to her standard of luxury in every detail. The handsome leather chairs and davenport, the curious tables of metal and tile, the extremely modern lamps and triangular ornaments. They did not speak of a restful, homelike atmosphere for a tired man when he came home from business.

But Christobel was young to think of such things. She merely felt them vaguely. The room did not rest her. It somehow repelled her. She turned away and was going to her own room, when a guarded thought came to her and drew her to the door of the inner room, her father's sleeping apartment. Ah! All was different here. The furniture was old and plain: a walnut bed and bureau, a wardrobe of indifferent pattern, a carpet on the floor that looked as if it had seen wear, and yet somehow spoke to the girl dimly of the past.

Where had she once traced her finger over the pattern of autumn leaves on a gray ground and thought it lovely? Could it have been when she was a little, little girl?

And then a picture in a cheap frame caught her eye. Why, that was her mother's picture up there on the wardrobe. Could this be her father's refuge from the world? Did he still cherish her mother's memory?

Christobel went and stood in front of the picture. It was not the photograph of her mother with which she was familiar, the one her father had put in a little locket long ago when she first went off to school. And it wasn't the miniature he had given her later on her sixteenth birthday. That had been sweet, but unreal. This old, faded photograph had about it a simple air of reality that went deep into her heart. The faint smile in the shadowy picture recalled the dearest thing that life had ever held for her, and drew her so, that she took the picture and pressed it to her lips again and again, and found a tear upon the glass that she had to wipe off. Ah! This is the mother that she had almost forgotten, yet for whom her hungry young heart had been crying out through the years.

At last she put the picture back in its place and turned away, reverently, as if the room were sacred. Somehow she felt that she would be nearer to her father now because she had caught this glimpse of the place in the house where he truly lived.

Suddenly she wondered if she ought to have come in, and stepping out, closed the door carefully. What did that outer richly furnished library matter, since there was this inner shrine? What mattered the whole house? She could breathe more freely since discovering this plain quiet spot where her father really lived.

She came out of her father's apartment, went down the hall to her own room, and stood at the window, looking out with unseeing eyes at the roofs and chimneys of the square. A moment later someone tapped at her door.

“There is a lady downstairs who wants to see you, Miss Christobel,” said Marie, handing her a card.

“To see me?” said Christobel wonderingly. “Oh, it must be for Father, I'm sure. I know so few people in the city.”

“You are the lady of the house now,” snapped Marie coldly, critically, as if with a kind of ill-hidden contempt that she did not know it herself without being told.

“Just a child!” said Marie contemptuously a moment later down in the kitchen. “She notices nothing. She couldn't have locked that door. It wouldn't occur to her. I must have locked it myself and mislaid the key. But where I could have put it I do not understand. But come, now is the time. Mrs. Romayne is here. She will keep Miss Christobel quite a time with her busybody ways and her flattering talk. Butting in, that is what she is here for! Come on. The butler has gone on an errand for the master.”