It was infuriating to see how much enjoyment every one but Jim and
myself got out of the situation. They howled with mirth over the
feeblest jokes, and when Max told a story without any point whatever,
they all had hysteria. Immediately after dinner Aunt Selina had begun
on the family connection again, and after two bad breaks on my part, Jim
offered to show her the house. The Mercer girls trailed along, unwilling
to lose any of the possibilities. They said afterward that it was
terrible: she went into all the closets, and ran her hand over the tops
of doors and kept getting grimmer and grimmer. In the studio they came
across a life study Jim was doing and she shut her eyes and made the
girls go out while he covered it with a drapery. Lollie! Who did the
Bacchante dance at three benefits last winter and was learning a new one
called “Eve”!
When they heard Aunt Selina on the second floor, Anne, Dal and Max
sneaked up to the studio for cigarettes, which left Mr. Harbison to me.
I was in the den, sitting in a low chair by the wood fire when he came
in. He hesitated in the doorway.
“Would you prefer being alone, or may I come in?” he asked. “Don’t mind
being frank. I know you are tired.”
“I have a headache, and I am sulking,” I said unpleasantly, “but at
least I am not actively venomous. Come in.”
So he came in and sat down across the hearth from me, and neither of us
said anything. The firelight flickered over the room, bringing out the
faded hues of the old Japanese prints on the walls, gleaming in the
mother-of-pearl eyes of the dragon on the screen, setting a grotesque
god on a cabinet to nodding. And it threw into relief the strong profile
of the man across from me, as he stared at the fire.
“I am afraid I am not very interesting,” I said at last, when he
showed no sign of breaking the silence. “The--the illness of the butler
and--Miss Caruthers’ arrival, have been upsetting.”
He suddenly roused with a start from a brown reverie.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I--oh, of course not! I was wondering
if I--if you were offended at what I said earlier in the evening;
the--Brushwood Boy, you know, and all that.”
“Offended?” I repeated, puzzled.
“You see, I have been living out of the world so long, and never seeing
any women but Indian squaws”--so there were no Spanish girls!--“that I’m
afraid I say what comes into my mind without circumlocution. And then--I
did not know you were married.”
“No, oh, no,” I said hastily. “But, of course, the more a woman is
married--I mean, you can not say too many nice things to married women.
They--need them, you know.”
I had floundered miserably, with his eyes on me, and I half expected him
to be shocked, or to say that married women should be satisfied with the
nice things their husbands say to them. But he merely remarked apropos
of nothing, or following a line of thought he had not voiced, that it
was trite but true that a good many men owed their success in life to
their wives.
“And a good many owe their wives to their success in life,” I retorted
cynically. At which he stared at me again.
It was then that the real complexity of the situation began to develop.
Some one had rung the bell and been admitted to the library and a maid
came to the door of the den. When she saw us she stopped uncertainly.
Even then it struck me that she looked odd, and she was not in uniform.
However, I was not informed at that time about bachelor establishments,
and the first thing she said, when she had asked to speak to me in the
hall, knocked her and her clothes clear out of my head. Evidently she
knew me.
“Miss McNair,” she said in a low tone. “There is a lady in the drawing
room, a veiled person, and she is asking for Mr. Wilson.”
“Can you not find him?” I asked. “He is in the house, probably in the
studio.”
The girl hesitated.
“Excuse me, miss, but Miss Caruthers--”
Then I saw the situation.
“Never mind,” I said. “Close the door into the drawing room, and I will
tell Mr. Wilson.”
But as the girl turned toward the doorway, the person in question
appeared in it, and raised her veil. I was perfectly paralyzed. It was
Bella! Bella in a fur coat and a veil, with the most tragic eyes I ever
saw and entirely white except for a dab of rouge in the middle of each
cheek. We stared at each other without speech. The maid turned and went
down the hall, and with that Bella came over to me and clutched me by
the arm.
“Who was being carried out into that ambulance?” she demanded, glaring
at me with the most awful intensity.
“I’m sure I don’t know, Bella,” I said, wriggling away from her fingers.
“What in the world are you doing here? I thought you were in Europe.”
“You are hiding something from me!” she accused. “It is Jim! I see it in
your face.”
“Well, it isn’t,” I snapped. “It seems to me, really, Bella, that you
and Jim ought to be able to manage your own affairs, without dragging me
in.” It was not pleasant, but if she was suffering, so was I. “Jim is as
well as he ever was. He’s upstairs somewhere. I’ll send for him.”
She gripped me again, and held on while her color came back.
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” she said, and she had quite got hold of
herself again. “I do not want to see him: I hope you don’t think, Kit,
that I came here to see James Wilson. Why, I have forgotten that there
IS such a person, and you know it.”
Somebody upstairs laughed, and I was growing nervous. What if Aunt
Selina should come down, or Mr. Harbison come out of the den?
“Why DID you come, then, Bella?” I inquired. “He may come in.”
“I was passing in the motor,” she said, and I honestly think she hoped I
would believe her, “and I saw that am--” She stopped and began again.
“I thought Jim was out of town, and I came to see Takahiro,” she said
brazenly. “He was devoted to me, and Evans is going to leave. I’ll tell
you what to do, Kit. I’ll go back to the dining room, and you send Taka
there. If any one comes, I can slip into the pantry.”
“It’s immoral,” I protested. “It’s immoral to steal your--”
“My own butler!” she broke in impatiently. “You’re not usually so
scrupulous, Kit. Hurry! I hear that hateful Anne Brown.”
So we slid back along the hall, and I rang for Takahiro. But no one
came.
“I think I ought to tell you, Bella,” I said as we waited, and Bella was
staring around the room--“I think you ought to know that Miss Caruthers
is here.”
Bella shrugged her shoulders.
“Well, thank goodness,” she said, “I don’t have to see her. The only
pleasant thing I remember about my year of married life is that I did
NOT meet Aunt Selina.”
I rang again, but still there was no answer. And then it occurred to
me that the stillness below stairs was almost oppressive. Bella was
noticing things, too, for she began to fasten her veil again with a
malicious little smile.
“One of the things I remember my late husband saying,” she observed,
“was that HE could manage this house, and had done it for years, with
flawless service. Stand on the bell, Kit.”
I did. We stood there, with the table, just as it had been left, between
us, and waited for a response. Bella was growing impatient. She raised
her eyebrows (she is very handsome, Bella is) and flung out her chin as
if she had begun to enjoy the horrible situation.
I thought I heard a rattle of silver from the pantry just then, and I
hurried to the door in a rage. But the pantry was empty of servants and
full of dishes, and all the lights were out but one, which was burning
dimly. I could have sworn that I saw one of the servants duck into the
stairway to the basement, but when I got there the stairs were empty,
and something was burning in the kitchen below.
Bella had followed me and was peering over my shoulder curiously.
“There isn’t a servant in the house,” she said triumphantly. And when we
went down to the kitchen, she seemed to be right. It was in disgraceful
order, and one of the bottles of wine that had ben banished from the
dining room sat half empty on the floor.
“Drunk!” Bella said with conviction. But I didn’t think so. There had
not been time enough, for one thing. Suddenly I remembered the ambulance
that had been the cause of Bella’s appearance--for no one could believe
her silly story about Takahiro. I didn’t wait to voice my suspicion to
her; I simply left her there, staring helplessly at the confusion, and
ran upstairs again: through the dining room, past Jimmy and Aunt Selina,
past Leila Mercer and Max, who were flirting on the stairs, up, up to
the servants’ bedrooms, and there my suspicions were verified. There was
every evidence of a hasty flight; in three bedrooms five trunks stood
locked and ominous, and the closets yawned with open doors, empty. Bella
had been right; there was not a servant in the house.
As I emerged from the untidy emptiness of the servants’ wing, I met Mr.
Harbison coming out of the studio.
“I wish you would let me do some of this running about for you, Mrs.
Wilson,” he said gravely. “You are not well, and I can’t think of
anything worse for a headache. Has the butler’s illness clogged the
household machinery?”
“Worse,” I replied, trying not to breathe in gasps. “I wouldn’t be
running around--like this--but there is not a servant in the house! They
have gone, the entire lot.”
“That’s odd,” he said slowly. “Gone! Are you sure?”
In reply I pointed to the servants’ wing. “Trunks packed,” I said
tragically, “rooms empty, kitchen and pantries, full of dishes. Did you
ever hear of anything like it?”
“Never,” he asserted. “It makes me suspect--” What he suspected he did
not say; instead he turned on his heel, without a word of explanation,
and ran down the stairs. I stood staring after him, wondering if every
one in the place had gone crazy. Then I heard Betty Mercer scream and
the rest talking loud and laughing, and Mr. Harbison came up the stairs
again two at a time.
“How long has that Jap been ailing, Mrs. Wilson?” he asked.
“I--I don’t know,” I replied helplessly. “What is the trouble, anyhow?”
“I think he probably has something contagious,” he said, “and it
has scared the servants away. As Mr. Brown said, he looked spotty. I
suggested to your husband that it might be as well to get the house
emptied--in case we are correct.”
“Oh, yes, by all means,” I said eagerly. I couldn’t get away too soon.
“I’ll go and get my--” Then I stopped. Why, the man wouldn’t expect me
to leave; I would have to play out the wretched farce to the end!
“I’ll go down and see them off,” I finished lamely, and we went together
down the stairs.
Just for the moment I forgot Bella altogether. I found Aunt Selina
bonneted and cloaked, taking a stirrup cup of Pomona for her nerves,
and the rest throwing on their wraps in a hurry. Downstairs Max was
telephoning for his car, which wasn’t due for an hour, and Jim was
walking up and down, swearing under his breath. With the prospect of
getting rid of them all, and, of going home comfortably to try to forget
the whole wretched affair, I cheered up quite a lot. I even played up my
part of hostess, and Dallas told me, aside, that I was a brick.
Just then Jim threw open the front door.
There was a man on the top step, with his mouth full of tacks, and he
was nailing something to the door, just below Jim’s Florentine bronze
knocker, and standing back with his head on one side to see if it was
straight.
“What are you doing?” Jim demanded fiercely, but the man only drove
another tack. It was Mr. Harbison who stepped outside and read the card.
It said “Smallpox.”
“Smallpox,” Mr. Harbison read, as if he couldn’t believe it. Then he
turned to us, huddled in the hall.
“It seems it wasn’t measles, after all,” he said cheerfully. “I move we
get into Mr. Reed’s automobile out there, and have a vaccination party.
I suppose even you blase society folk have not exhausted that kind of
diversion.”
But the man on the step spat his tacks in his hand and spoke for the
first time.
“No, you don’t,” he said. “Not on your life. Just step back, please, and
close the door. This house is quarantined.”