"Sick!" Aunt Selina said, from a hall chair. "Sick! Where?"
"All over," Bella quavered. "His poor head is hot, and he"s thirsty, but he doesn"t want anything but water."
"Great Scott!" Dal said suddenly. "Suppose he should--Bella, are you telling us ALL his symptoms?"
Bella put down her handkerchief and got up. From her position on the stairs she looked down on us with something of her old haughty manner.
"If he is ill, you may blame yourselves, all of you," she said cruelly.
"You taunted him with being--fat, and laughed at him, until he stopped eating the things he should eat. And he has been exercising--on the roof, until he has worn himself out. And now--he is ill. He--he has a rash."
Everybody jumped at that, and we instinctively moved away from Bella.
She was quite cold and scornful by that time.
"A rash!" Max exclaimed. "What sort of rash?"
"I did not see it," Bella said with dignity, and turning, she went up the stairs.
There was a great deal of excitement, and n.o.body except Mr. Harbison was willing to go near Jim. He went up at once with Bella, while Max and Dal sat cravenly downstairs and wondered if we would all take it, and Anne told about a man she knew who had it, and was deaf and dumb and blind when he recovered.
Mr. Harbison came down after a while, and said that the rash was there, right enough, and that Jim absolutely refused to be quarantined; that he insisted that he always got a rash from early strawberries and that if he DID have anything, since they were so touchy he hoped they would all get it. If they locked him in he would kick the door down.
We had a long conference in the hall, with Bella sitting red-eyed and objecting to every suggestion we made. And finally we arranged to shut Jim up in one of the servants" bedrooms with a sheet wrung out of disinfectant hung over the door. Bella said she would sit outside in the hall and read to him through the closed door, so finally he gave a grudging consent. But he was in an awful humor. Max and Dal put on rubber gloves and helped him over, and they said afterward that the way he talked was fearful. And there was a telephone in the maid"s room, and he kept asking for things every five minutes.
When the doctor came he said it was too early to tell positively, and he ordered him liquid diet and said he would be back that evening.
Which--the diet--takes me back to the famine. After they had moved Jim, Mr. Harbison went back to the telephone, and found everything as it should be. So he followed the telephone wire, and the rest followed him.
I did not; he had systematically ignored me all morning, after having dared to kiss me the night before. And any other man I know, after looking at me the way he had looked a dozen times, would have been at least reasonably glad to find me free and unmarried. But it was clear that he was not; I wondered if he was the kind of man who always makes love to the other man"s wife and runs like mad when she is left a widow, or gets a divorce.
And just when I had decided that I hated him, and that there was one man I knew who would never make love to a woman whom he thought married and then be very dignified and aloof when he found she wasn"t, I heard what was wrong with the telephone wire.
It had been cut! Cut through with a pair of silver manicure scissors from the dressing table in Bella"s room, where Aunt Selina slept! The wire had been clipped where it came into the house, just under a window, and the scissors still lay on the sill.
It was mysterious enough, but no one was interested in the mystery just then. We wanted food, and wanted it at once. Mr. Harbison fixed the wire, and the first thing we did, of course, was to order something to eat. Aunt Selina went to bed just after luncheon with indigestion, to the relief of every one in the house. She had been most unpleasant all morning.
When she found herself ill, however, she insisted on having Bella, and that made trouble at once. We found Bella with her cheek against the door into Jim"s room, looking maudlin while he shouted love messages to her from the other side. At first she refused to stir, but after Anne and Max had tried and failed, the rest of us went to her in a body and implored her. We said Aunt Selina was in awful shape--which she was, as to temper--and that she had thrown a mustard plaster at Anne, which was true.
So Bella went, grumbling, and Jim was a maniac. We had not thought it would be so bad for Bella, but Aunt Selina fell asleep soon after she took charge, holding Bella"s hand, and slept for three hours and never let go!
About two that afternoon the sun came out, and the rest of us went to the roof. The sleet had melted and the air was fairly warm. Two housemaids dusting rugs on the top of the next house came over and stared at us, and somebody in an automobile down on Riverside Drive stood up and waved at us. It was very cheerful and hopelessly lonely.
I stayed on the roof after the others had gone, and for some time I thought I was alone. After a while, I got a whiff of smoke, and then I saw Mr. Harbison far over in the corner, one foot on the parapet, moodily smoking a pipe. He was gazing out over the river, and paying no attention to me. This was natural, considering that I had hardly spoken to him all day.
I would not let him drive me away, so I sat still, and it grew darker and colder. He filled his pipe now and then, but he never looked in my direction. Finally, however, as it grew very dusk, he knocked the ashes out and came toward me.
"I am going to make a request, Miss McNair," he said evenly. "Please keep off the roof after sunset. There are--reasons." I had risen and was preparing to go downstairs.
"Unless I know the reasons, I refuse to do anything of the kind," I retorted. He bowed.
"Then the door will be kept locked," he rejoined, and opened it for me.
He did not follow me, but stood watching until I was down, and I heard him close the roof door firmly behind me.
Chapter XXI. A BAR OF SOAP
Late that evening Betty Mercer and Dallas were writing verses of condolence to be signed by all of us and put under the door into Jim"s room when Bella came running down the stairs.
Dal was reading the first verse when she came. "Listen to this, Bella,"
he said triumphantly:
"There was a fat artist named Jas, Who cruelly called his friends nas.
When, altho" shut up tight, He broke out over night With a rash that is maddening, he clas."
Then he caught sight of Bella"s face as she stood in the doorway, and stopped.
"Jim is delirious!" she announced tragically. "You shut him in there all alone and now he"s delirious. I"ll never forgive any of you."
"Delirious!" everybody exclaimed.
"He was sane enough when I took him his chicken broth," Mr. Harbison said. "He was almost fluent."
"He is stark, staring crazy," Bella insisted hysterically. "I--I locked the door carefully when I went down to my dinner, and when I came up it--it was unlocked, and Jim was babbling on the bed, with a sheet over his face. He--he says the house is haunted and he wants all the men to come up and sit in the room with him."
"Not on your life," Max said. "I am young, and my career has only begun.
I don"t intend to be cut off in the flower of my youth. But I"ll tell you what I will do; I"ll take him a drink. I can tie it to a pole or something."
But Mr. Harbison did not smile. He was thoughtful for a minute. Then:
"I don"t believe he is delirious," he said quietly, "and I wouldn"t be surprised if he has happened on something that--will be of general interest. I think I will stay with him tonight."
After that, of course, none of the others would confess that he was afraid, so with the South American leading, they all went upstairs. The women of the party sat on the lower steps and listened, but everything was quiet. Now and then we could hear the sound of voices, and after a while there was a rapid slamming of doors and the sound of some one running down to the second floor. Then quiet again.
None of us felt talkative. Bella had followed the men up and had been put out, and sat sniffling by herself in the den. Aunt Selina was working over a jig-saw puzzle in the library, and declaring that some of it must be lost. Anne and Leila Mercer were embroidering, and Betty and I sat idle, our hands in our laps. The whole atmosphere of the house was mysterious. Anne told over again of the strange noises the night her necklace was stolen. Betty asked me about the time when the comfort slipped from under my fingers. And when, in the midst of the story, the telephone rang, we all jumped and shrieked.
In an hour or so they sent for Flannigan, and he went upstairs. He came down again soon, however, and returned with something over his arm that looked like a rope. It seemed to be made of all kinds of things tied together, trunk straps, clothesline, bed sheets, and something that Flannigan pointed to with rage and said he hadn"t been able to keep his clothes on all day. He refused to explain further, however, and trailed the nondescript article up the stairs. We could only gaze after him and wonder what it all meant.
The conclave lasted far into the night. The feminine contingent went to bed, but not to sleep. Some time after midnight, Mr. Harbison and Max went downstairs and I could hear them rattling around testing windows and burglar alarms. But finally every one settled down and the rest of the night was quiet.
Betty Mercer came into my room the next morning, Sunday, and said Anne Brown wanted me. I went over at once, and Anne was sitting up in bed, crying. Dal had slipped out of the room at daylight, she said, and hadn"t come back. He had thought she was asleep, but she wasn"t, and she knew he was dead, for nothing ever made Dal get up on Sunday before noon.
There was no one moving in the house, and I hardly knew what to do. It was Betty who said she would go up and rouse Mr. Harbison and Max, who had taken Jim"s place in the studio. She started out bravely enough, but in a minute we heard her flying back. Anne grew perfectly white.
"He"s lying on the upper stairs!" Betty cried, and we all ran out. It was quite true. Dal was lying on the stairs in a bathrobe, with one of Jim"s Indian war clubs in his hand. And he was sound asleep.
He looked somewhat embarra.s.sed when he roused and saw us standing around. He said he was going to play a practical joke on somebody and fell asleep in the middle of it. And Anne said he wasn"t even an intelligent liar, and went back to bed in a temper. But Betty came in with me, and we sat and looked at each other and didn"t say much. The situation was beyond us.
The doctor let Jim out the next day, there having been nothing the matter with him but a stomach rash. But Jim was changed; he mooned around Bella, of course, as before, but he was abstracted at times, and all that day--Sunday--he wandered off by himself, and one would come across him unexpectedly in the bas.e.m.e.nt or along some of the unused back halls.