Ransom

  There was a light in her father’s eyes as he took up the instrument again.

  “Well, Mrs. Romayne, I guess we’ll just ask you to excuse us this time. We appreciate your thoughtfulness of course, but we have so many things to talk over, and the time is short. Some other time perhaps you’ll be good enough to ask us…. Oh, that’s very kind. But just now I think it will be impossible.”

  Christobel watched her father’s face as more honeyed words were poured into his ear. He had a very pleasant smile on his face. Was he sorry not to go? Or would he perhaps prefer to go alone after they were back in school? She tried to put away the thought, but the poison of the cook’s words had entered her soul, and she could not quite get back the sweet freedom of their quiet intercourse when her father came back and sat down with them on the couch again.

  “I declare I believe I’m hungry!” he said, as he put an arm around each of them. “I wonder what has become of that butler? Can he have cleared out, or is he taking the night off as well as the evening? If he’s here, we can ring him up and have a tray up with sandwiches and ginger ale or something like that. Rand, go ring the bell.”

  “Oh, Daddy!” said Christobel, springing up eagerly. “Don’t call the butler. Couldn’t we all go down in the kitchen and find something? I know how to make cocoa. It would be fun!”

  “Let’s,” said the boy, springing up and pulling his father to his feet as if he had been another boy. “There might be olives and celery. There were some left from dinner. I saw them.”

  “They’re probably not left now,” laughed the father. “I believe we had a bunch of crooks in the kitchen.”

  “Well, there’ll be more in the pantry perhaps. There’ll likely be crackers and jelly and cans of things. We have suppers like that at school. Some of the fellas raid the kitchen sometimes when the matron’s out for the evening, and we have great suppers. I can scramble eggs.”

  It was on the tip of his father’s tongue to ask Randall if he had been on raiding parties, but remembering some of his own early escapades, and seeing the boyish look in his son’s eyes, he grasped his hand and followed, letting the raiding parties pass for the moment. There was something wonderful to this tired, silent, lonely father in being with his long-alienated children again.

  So they all tiptoed quietly down to the kitchen, looking cautiously about for the butler as if they had no right in those precincts and might be scolded if they got caught.

  Like three children they raided their own kitchen, a great tiled place with looming gas range, wide gleaming sink, electric appliances galore, and equipment enough to feed an army.

  “Where would the cocoa be kept?” asked Christobel, opening cupboard doors and peering behind boxes and glass jars and tins.

  “Well, I’m sure I don’t know,” said the bewildered father. “This never was a kitchen that I had much to do with.” He made a wry face.

  “I’ll find it,” chirped the girl with an excited laugh.

  Randall was snooping around in the pantry and storeroom. He discovered the refrigerator, a mammoth concern almost big enough for a garage.

  “Gee! Here’s olives!” he shouted. “And celery, too! And a whole roast chicken with only half the breast gone! Gee! This is great!”

  He appeared in the doorway, the platter in one hand and a bottle of olives in the other.

  “And here’s the cocoa,” said Christobel triumphantly. “Now, I wonder if there is any milk? We could use condensed milk, you know.”

  “Two bottles in the ’frigerator!” shouted Randall, going back to search again. He handed her a bottle.

  They rifled the china closet of some of the priceless dishes that Charmian had purchased for her deluxe dinners, and spread their bounty on the kitchen table with the eagerness of children, the man of the house entering into the fun and joking with his children as if he were only an older brother. As they sat down to their impromptu supper, Christobel thought in her heart like a chime of sweet bells, Oh, I’m so glad Mrs. Romayne isn’t here! I’m so glad we’ve got Father to ourselves! If only there wasn’t any Mrs. Romayne in the future. Oh, how could she ever stand it to go back to school after this beautiful little time together and think she would be separated from her father again by another woman?

  Later, when they had cleared away the things and gone at last to rest, she crept into her bed with the thought that Mother would have enjoyed seeing them all together again. Oh, if Mother could only come back to them!

  Chapter 5

  Quite early the next morning, Christobel woke up and looked about the unfamiliar room.

  It was not a room where she had ever slept before on any of her former visits to her father’s home. Charmian had always relegated her to one of the smallest guest rooms on the third floor back whenever she had happened to be in that house for a day or two en route to some other parking place. This room was one of the best guest rooms, and her bags had been dumped here on her arrival the day before the funeral. The bed happened to be made up for a weekend guest whose visit was canceled on account of Charmian’s operation.

  Christobel did not feel at home in the room, although she admired the beautiful things in it. It seemed even more like a picture room than the rooms downstairs. There were lovely curtains of delicate lacelike frost, with an inner sheath of palest green taffeta, ruffled elaborately. There was a bedspread of green taffeta to match, and the delicate color was carried out with variations of ivory lace in frills and insets in the covers of the bureau, the lamp shades, the light switches, the cover to the dressing table, and the very upholstery of the dressing table bench. Ivory and green were the fittings of the dressing table, and the private bath beyond showed the colors in tiles and bath towels. Christobel liked it; it seemed so restful. Yet she did not feel at home in it. There was something too fussy about it all. The hairbrush and other toilet articles on the bureau had edges of filigreed gilt, and there were ruffles, ruffles, ruffles, and frills everywhere, and tiny silk rosebuds sprinkled over the lace and silk till it was almost bewildering, and much too ornate.

  To Christobel, contrasting it with the monotony of a boarding school room that had not had the special attention of a loving mother, it seemed rich and beautiful, but not her ideal. She felt like a little cat in a strange garret.

  She lay there a few minutes with her eyes half closed, letting the green shimmer from the lovely curtains fill her gaze with their restful light. There seemed something pleasant about waking up, and she was almost afraid to try to think what it was lest she be disappointed and life would turn out to be the same empty, dull perspective filled with many uninteresting duties that didn’t get one anywhere and went on and on indefinitely.

  It seemed that somehow there was a burden lifted from her, and suddenly it came to her that it was the funeral. That was over. That had been something to dread. That had been something to greatly dread. That solemn finish of a life that had never been anything to her but a distress.

  Christobel had not felt enmity toward her stepmother. In a way, she had admired her young, vivid personality and could have been interested in her if she had not come between her and any sort of life or love of her own. Yet, she had not rejoiced with any triumph when word came that Charmian had been so suddenly blotted out in the midst of her activities. It had, rather, been a frightening thing to have her dead, to have to see her so.

  Christobel was glad that it had been God who had taken her away and that she had not been asked if she would like to have Charmian gone. It had truly never occurred to her to wish that she might die. Now that she felt the great relief of her absence, she was glad that she had not been tempted by any such wish.

  She thought back over the years when she used to cry herself to sleep at night with loneliness and longing for someone to really love her. Oh, yes, her father had loved her, but he had been so hampered and tied by Charmian, that it seemed as if even on the rare occasions when he ran away from home to see her for a few hours at the school, they were both held from sp
eaking out freely and saying the things they would have said, by the very fact of Charmian being back in the city in the big house that was called home, and yet was not a home.

  Christobel drew a deep breath of relief and put the subject away from her. She was not glad that Charmian had had to die to get out of all their lives, but she was glad that there was a new era opening before her. Glad, glad with a thrill she had not felt since she was a little girl, that her father was hers once more. For a little while at last. Oh, if there were only some way of keeping him. Of not having another stepmother come between them as those awful servants had suggested. Oh, did men always have to marry again? No, there was Betty Bates’s uncle Harmon. His wife had died when Betty was a tiny girl, and he had been true to her memory ever since.

  But Christobel could remember back to the day when her father brought Charmian home, how he had explained that she needed a mother because her own mother had died, and that he had brought her a lovely new one. And Charmian had looked her over coldly and said, “I am glad she has curls. I hate children with straight hair.” Perhaps her father felt that he was marrying again for their sakes. She was sure he had. If in some way she and Randall could only make up to him for the lack of Mother, then he wouldn’t be so lonely. Perhaps he wouldn’t want to marry again. But she could see how hard it was going to be to get away from that Mrs. Romayne if she determined to marry him and mother them all.

  The thought of Mrs. Romayne brought back last evening and her father’s long conversation with her on the telephone. But Father hadn’t seemed to want to go and take dinner with her himself. Perhaps he didn’t care anything about her—yet! If there were only some way to get him away where Mrs. Romayne couldn’t ever find them!

  Then she recalled the blessedness of sitting with her head on her father’s shoulder as long as she wanted to, and putting a shy hand up and touching his hair and smoothing his cheek, without any sharp, sneering Charmian to say, “Get up, you great girl! Don’t get mushy over a mere father! You’re too big to kiss and maul him. For pity’s sake, go to bed!”

  Oh, how those words had cut when she had first heard them! Were all stepmothers like that? Christobel thought not. Marta Sharpless had a sweet stepmother who sent her lovely presents and kissed her and came often to school to see her. No, it must be just like buying something. One took it for what it looked like in the store. One couldn’t tell how well it would wear. And Charmian hadn’t worn well. Father hadn’t been to blame. Somehow she could feel that Father had suffered, too! He hadn’t been happy. Even Father seemed relieved last night to be all alone. Just they three! Not even a servant! And then Christobel sat up sharply in her luxurious bed and remembered.

  There wasn’t a servant in the house, and there would be no breakfast unless she got it. Women always looked after those things. Would she know how? She had never a chance to do more than make cocoa and toast in school. Oh, yes, she could scramble eggs. What could they have for breakfast?

  She sprang out of bed and began to dress rapidly, trying to remember what she had seen in the refrigerator last night. She would love to get a beautiful breakfast—fruit and cereal, and toast and coffee, chops, hotcakes. But there would not likely be any chops in the house, and she wouldn’t know how to cook them if there were. Could she make hotcakes?

  She had seen a package of bacon, but how again did one cook bacon? She didn’t even know what it looked like before it was cooked.

  And coffee. Could she make coffee?

  She hurried softly downstairs, listening as she went on tiptoe.

  The house seemed big and empty in the early morning. She hadn’t stopped to see what time it was until she came into the gloomy kitchen. The clock said only half past seven. Her father did not usually eat before half past eight or nine. But then, it might take a very long time to get a first meal ready. She was glad she had come down.

  She shivered a little as she looked around and rolled up her sleeves out of the way. Now that she had come into the kitchen with two swing doors shut behind her, she rather dreaded going back to the front of the house again. It seemed somehow as if the shadow of death was in the corners of the rooms that Charmian had made for herself and her friends. But of course that was silly. That was something she must get over.

  She went to a large cupboard and swung open the door. There were a lot of boxes up on the shelf. They had labels. She selected a cereal that she had always liked pretty well at school, though they seldom had it. She looked inside at the curious fine little grains. Was that the way they looked before they were cooked? Made out of wheat! How did they get them into such cute little pellets? Machinery probably. What a lot of interesting things there were in the world that she had never known about!

  She turned the box around in her hand and studied the label. Ah! Here were the directions for cooking. She drew a deep breath.

  Two cups of boiling water to one of cereal. The water must be boiling when the cereal was poured slowly in.

  She studied the directions carefully, reading them over twice, and then hunted for a kettle and a cup and measured her water for boiling.

  While the water was boiling she investigated the refrigerator again, got out the bacon and eggs, and found the coffee. She was delighted to discover that the can of coffee also had directions for making it.

  Suddenly she heard footsteps outside the back door and stepped back into the pantry out of sight. Had that butler come back? She didn’t want to meet him alone. He might not like it that she was in the kitchen. Then she remembered that it was her father’s kitchen, and she had reason to be there. There was no sense in her trembling this way at every little thing. She suddenly felt that she wanted to cry.

  But there came a thump at the back door, as if something had dropped on the doorstep, and then the footsteps ran away, back to the street again.

  Christobel mustered enough courage to open the door and found milk bottles, cream, a loaf of bread, and a dozen rolls lying there. That must have been the baker with the bread who had frightened her. And no telling when the milk came.

  Happy as a child playing dolls, she brought in the bread and milk. And now to her delight she found the water bubbling merrily away, and went about following the directions for making cereal. It was most exciting, for at a certain stage the whole mass rose up, threatening to overflow the saucepan, and the inexperienced cook burned her finger and got a shot of hot steam in one eye before she managed to turn the gas lower.

  The coffee was another problem, and while she made it, two good slices of toast began to burn and lift up a smell that nearly choked her.

  In the midst of it all, while she was trying to keep the next batch of toast from burning and at the same time hold a blistered finger under the cold water faucet, the door swung open from the pantry, and there stood the haughty butler, looking at her with a cold and disapproving eye. He had evidently let himself in silently with his own key at the servants’ entrance.

  Christobel felt herself begin to tremble. But then she remembered that her father was upstairs, and there was no cause for fear. Somehow the old habit had fallen back upon her.

  “Where’s the cook?” asked Hawkins sharply, with not as much respect in his voice, she fancied, as there had been yesterday. His eyes were bleary, and he had a sullen look on his face.

  “Just a minute,” she managed to say calmly. “I’ll call my father. Watch that toast, please, till I get back.”

  She darted through the door and up the back stairs before he could say more, knocking excitedly on her father’s door.

  “Hawkins is downstairs, Daddy,” she whispered through the keyhole, and then to her relief, she heard her father coming instantly to the door.

  He was putting on his coat as he came, and seeing her perturbation, he smiled at her.

  “Where? In the kitchen?”

  “Yes,” breathed Christobel. “He frightened me. He is very cross.”

  Her father went swiftly down the stairs and into the kitchen, but Hawkins was a
lready on his way up the back stairs, walking stealthily. She saw him push open the swing door and look toward her for a second, as she stood in the upper hall, then glide stealthily toward the servants’ part of the house. Something in his manner alarmed her. Softly she crept to her brother’s door and called him.

  “Rand! Come quick! Daddy may need you! Hurry! The butler is back, and he looks ugly. Daddy may want you to call the police.”

  Something in her tone must have reached down beneath the depths of sleep in which Randall was involved, for after the first sleepy “Wotchawant?” she heard him roll out of bed and plant his feet firmly on the floor. A moment more and he was at the door, enveloping himself in a bathrobe made of all the colors of the rainbow, and shuffling his feet into slippers.

  “Where’s he at?” Randall was frowning, his hair sticking up in every direction. His hair was straight and sharp and black and thick.

  Christobel choked down the excitement that almost made her voiceless, and managed to tell what she knew in a throbbing whisper.

  “Aw-wright! Just you stayyere! Don’t get excited, see? I’ll handle this!” Randall said loftily.

  Christobel saw him march with a heavy frown toward the swing door and was suddenly frightened lest something would happen to him. Perhaps she shouldn’t have called to him at all. He was such an excitable kid! And then a strangling smell of burning toast came to her nostrils, and she fled to the kitchen in a panic. Her toast was burning again. Hawkins had not tended to it! Her cereal, too, perhaps. Her nice breakfast that she had worked so hard to make!

  Hawkins was coming back from the door of his own room when Randall encountered him. He looked at the boy, with fight in his eye, and Randall gave him back a glance of battle.

  “Hey! Who’s done what with my property?” demanded the irate butler, sticking out his jaw at the son of the house in a most un-butlerlike manner.

  “Whaddaya mean coming back ta the house and talking like that?” spoke up Rannie in a lordly manner. “Where were you las’ night I’d liketa know? You’re half stewed now, or ya wouldn’t dare talk like that. What ya got ta say about anything, running off all night? My father give ya permission to go?”