Coming Through the Rye Read Online Free Page A

son, entered and looked around with white, startled faces.

Chapter 3
    I n future years when Romayne looked back on that silence that followed her father’s entrance into the room, it seemed to her to have lasted for years, and to have encompassed three distinct eras of emotion.
    There was the first instant of relief that her father had come and that now all would be set right. During that instant her own firm little chin was lifted just the slightest, haughtily, with an assurance, the perfect assurance that she had always felt in her father to dominate any situation; an almost pity for the cocksure young man who had been so condescending and so dictatorial to her in her own house, and she swept him a brief glance of contempt that included the whole room. The boy, Chris, seemed suddenly to have been submerged in the amber-colored curtains. She had forgotten that he existed.
    Her eyes went back to her father’s face, expecting to find a certain look, the expression of an aristocrat who had arrived in time to discomfort interlopers. She knew the look, he had worn it often through the years in protecting herself and her mother from impudence or presumption on the part of servants or officials. It became him well, that look of righteous indignation, tempered with severity. She was always a little sorry for anybody who had incurred his displeasure when her father was really roused. He had a command of fine, terse sarcasm that was really withering to listen to. That he would use it now she did not doubt. She waited to hear him speak and realized that the silence had been long, with something vitally terrible in it that she did not understand. Of course, her father would be much disturbed that she had been here alone in the house with a company of men of this sort. He would be fairly overwhelmed.
    She turned her attention fully to his face again. Was it something in the expression of the uniformed man who stood at his elbow that made her look more closely? Why, her father’s face was ashen! His eyes! There was nothing haughty in them. They looked—why, almost
frightened!
Perhaps he was sick. The doctor had said there was a little weakness of the heart—nothing serious. It was not good for him to be excited. She flashed a glance of condemnation toward the leader of the men, who stood just ahead of her to the right. Then her eyes went again to her father’s face.
    Mr. Ransom was a handsome man as the world counts beauty in a man. He had regular features and a fine old-fashioned bearing, which his silver hair and well-clipped pointed beard accentuated. He habitually bore himself as one who respected himself and dealt gently, almost reverently, with himself. He was the embodiment of lofty sentiments, and his well-groomed person was always an object of observation and admiration as he walked the streets and went about his daily business. One thought of him as a man who wore glasses attached to a fine gold chain over his ear and carried a gold-headed cane. He was the kind of man who was always well dressed, carried his papers in a fine cloth bag, and wore silk hats whenever there was the slightest excuse for them. He might have been an elder in a church, or even a minister, so dignified, so conventional, so altogether fitting was everything about his appearance. People had always looked upon him as a good man, well-born, well-bred, and upright to the core. This was the general essence of the character that his daughter had always revered, and that more than anything else in her life she had been most proud of. And now she turned eyes that were accustomed to watching him proudly, tenderly, to his face once more, and all those things that she had been accustomed to see in his beloved face had vanished. Instead the lips had grown more ashen, the eyes wild, like a hunted animal, as they glanced from one intruder to another, the skin of his face white like death as he stood perfectly still looking slowly around that