Among the Barons

CHAPTER 19

The rest of the day felt interminable. Luke wandered aimlessly around the house and grounds for several hours. He didn’t encounter either of Smits’s parents again, but there seemed to be a servant around every corner. And they all seemed to know everything about him — or, at least, about the person he was supposed to be.

“Have you brought up those grades in mathematics, Master Lee?” a man Luke guessed was a butler asked him in the front hallway.

“I tuned up the engine on your motor scooter, sir,” a mechanic in a grease-covered uniform told him out beside the garage, which looked large enough to hold a boat — and probably did, come to think of it.

As the grandfather clock by the front door chimed seven, a housekeeper scolded him, “There you are! Why aren’t you washed up and dressed for dinner?”

“I…,“ Luke protested. He scrambled toward what he thought was the dining room. He remembered seeing a vast wooden table in one of these rooms — now, where was it?

Mostly by luck Luke arrived in the proper room. Mr. and Mrs. Grant were seated at opposite ends of the huge table. Two chairs were arranged between them. Smits sat in one of those chairs. Luke dashed toward the other one.

‘And where is your tuxedo, young man?” Mrs. Grant asked.

“Um…,” Luke said. He noticed that both Smits and Mr. Grant were in formal black suits, with pure white shirts underneath and black bows tied crisply around their necks.

“We didn’t dress for dinner at school,” Smits volunteered. “Lee probably forgot all about it.”

“Indeed,” Mrs. Grant sniffed. “Well, we shan’t have you forgetting here. Go and change this instant”.

Luke considered himself quite fortunate to be able to find his way back to his room, find a suit — a tuxedo? — in his closet, and scramble into it. He was flimbling with the tie, wondering how angry the Grants would be if he just forgot about it — versus how angry they’d be if he kept them waiting any longer — when Oscar silently stepped into the room and adeptly twisted the tie into shape. He straightened the sleeves of Luke’s coat, shoved a stray lock of hair off Luke’s forehead, and pushed him out the door without saying a single word.

Back in the dining room Mrs. Grant purred, “Now, that’s better. That’s the son I like to see.” Then she, Mr.

Grant, and Smits began spooning up soup that had gone cold. The dinner passed in a blur. Luke ate heartily of the soup, thinking it was a shame that that was all there was. So he was pleasantly surprised when a plateful of greens arrived next. But the courses that came after that were foods he had no hope of identifying. Once, he suspected he was eating white lumps of rice under some type of gravy But Luke was pretty certain that the gravy wasn’t made from pork fat, which was the only kind he’d ever eaten before.

He supposed the food was good — delicious, even — but it was hard to enjoy it sitting with a sullen Smits and Smits’s icy parents. And an army of servants constantly came in and out, whisking dishes away as soon as any of them were finished. By the ninth course Luke was aware of a strange sensation in his stomach: He was too full.

“Psst, Lee,” Smits finally whispered from across the table. “You don’t have to eat it all.”

Luke noticed that the others were barely touching their food, letting the servants take away plates missing only a bite or two.

“Oh,” Luke said. He wondered what happened to the extra food. Did the servants eat it? Was it thrown away?

No one would be able to tell from the Grants’ dining habits that there’d been famines and starvation barely fifteen years earlier, that food was still rationed across the land. Luke had a feeling that the Grants hadn’t paid any attention to the famines at all.

Except for Smits’s quick whisper, there was no chatter at the table, no questions from the parents, like, “How’s school going?” or “When do you suppose they’ll have the wiring fixed at Hendricks?” For all the notice Mr. and Mrs. Grant gave Smits and Luke, you’d almost have thought the boys were still away at school.

The Grants didn’t even speak to the servants who brought and removed the food. For all the notice they gave to the servants, Luke wondered if they thought that the food appeared and disappeared by magic.

Finally, finally, the servants brought ice cream, which Luke was sure had to be the last course. In spite of his now aching stomach, he ate all of his ice cream, down to the last drop. Ice cream had been such a treat back home. He’d had it only once or twice in his life.

“Lee,” Mrs. Grant hissed. “Gentlemen do not gobble.”

Red faced, Luke dropped his spoon. It clattered on the floor, spinning off threads of melted ice cream across the polished marble.

“May I be excused?” Smits asked in the silence that followed.

Mrs. Grant nodded.

Luke watched a servant swoop out of nowhere, grab up the spoon, and wipe away the ice cream in a flash. He gathered his nerve to speak.

“May I be excused, too?” he asked.

“I suppose,” Mrs. Grant said.

Heavyhearted, Luke found his way back to Lee’s room.

He threw himself across the bed, fighting waves of nausea. He’d hated Hendricks School at first, too, but the Grants’ house seemed much, much worse. And yet Smits had seemed to be trying to help him. And Oscar had appeared at just the right moment to help him with that tie.

Why? Why did either of them care what happened to Luke?