The most charitable thing would be to say nothing about the first day.
We were baldly brutal--that’s the only word for it. And Mr. Harbison,
with his beautiful courtesy--the really sincere kind--tried to patch up
one quarrel after another and failed. He rose superbly to the occasion,
and made something that he called a South American goulash for luncheon,
although it was too salty, and every one was thirsty the rest of the
day.
Bella was horrid, of course. She froze Jim until he said he was going to
sit in the refrigerator and cool the butter. She locked herself in the
dressing room--it had been assigned to me, but that made no difference
to Bella--and did her nails, and took three different baths, and refused
to come to the table. And of course Jimmy was wild, and said she would
starve. But I said, “Very well, let her starve. Not a tray shall leave
my kitchen.” It was a comfort to have her shut up there anyhow; it
postponed the time when she would come face to face with Flannigan.
Aunt Selina got sick that day, as I have said. I was not so bitter as
the others; I did not say that I wished she would die. The worst I ever
wished her was that she might be quite ill for some time, and yet, when
she began to recover, she was dreadful to me. She said for one thing,
that it was the hard-boiled eggs and the state of the house that did
it, and when I said that the grippe was a germ, she retorted that I had
probably brought it to her on my clothing.
You remember that Betty had drawn the nurse’s slip, and how pleased she
had been about it. She got up early the morning of the first day
and made herself a lawn cap and telephoned out for a white nurse’s
uniform--that is, of course, for a white uniform for a nurse. She really
looked very fetching, and she went around all the morning with a red
cross on her sleeve and a Saint Cecilia expression, gathering up bottles
of medicine--most of it flesh reducer, which was pathetic, and closing
windows for fear of drafts. She refused to help with the house work, and
looked quite exalted, but by afternoon it had palled on her somewhat,
and she and Max shook dice.
Betty was really pleased when Aunt Selina sent for her. She took in a
bottle of cologne to bathe her brow, and we all stood outside the door
and listened. Betty tiptoed in in her pretty cap and apron, and we heard
her cautiously draw down the shades.
“What are you doing that for?” Aunt Selina demanded. “I like the light.”
“It’s bad for your poor eyes,” Betty’s tone was exactly the proper
bedside pitch, low and sugary.
“Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of the western sea!” Dal hummed
outside.
“Put up those window shades!” Aunt Selina’s voice was strong enough.
“What’s in that bottle?”
Betty was still mild. She swished to the window and raised the shade.
“I’m SO sorry you are ill,” she said sympathetically. “This is for your
poor aching head. Now close your eyes and lie perfectly still, and I
will cool your forehead.”
“There’s nothing the matter with my head,” Aunt Selina retorted. “And
I have not lost my faculties; I am not a child or a sick cow. If that’s
perfumery, take it out.”
We heard Betty coming to the door, but there was no time to get away.
She had dropped her mask for a minute and was biting her lip, but when
she saw us she forced a smile.
“She’s ill, poor dear,” she said. “If you people will go away, I can
bring her around all right. In two hours she will eat out of my hand.”
“Eat a piece out of your hand,” Max scoffed in a whisper.
We waited a little longer, but it was too painful. Aunt Selina demanded
a mustard foot bath and a hot lemonade and her back rubbed with liniment
and some strong black tea. And in the intervals she wanted to be read
to out of the prayer book. And when we had all gone away, there came the
most terrible noise from Aunt Selina’s room, and every one ran. We found
Betty in the hall outside the door, crying, with her fingers in her ears
and her cap over her eye. She said she had been putting the hot water
bottle to Aunt Selina’s back, and it had been too hot. Just then
something hit against the door with a soft thud, fell to the floor and
burst, for a trickle of hot water came over the sill.
“She won’t let me hold her hand,” Betty wailed, “or bathe her brow, or
smooth her pillow. She thinks of nothing but her stomach or her back!
And when I try to make her bed look decent, she spits at me like a cat.
Everything I do is wrong. She spilled the foot bath into her shoes, and
blamed me for it.”
It took the united efforts of all of us--except Bella, who stood back
and smiled nastily--to get Betty back into the sick room again. I was
supremely thankful by that time that I had not drawn the nurse’s slip.
With dinner ordered in from one of the clubs, and the omelet ten hours
behind me, my position did not seem so unbearable. But a new development
was coming.
While Betty was fussing with Aunt Selina, Max led a search of the house.
He said the necklace and the bracelet must be hidden somewhere, and that
no crevice was too small to neglect.
We made a formal search all together, except Betty and Aunt Selina,
and we found a lot of things in different places that Jim said had been
missing since the year one. But no jewels--nothing even suggesting a
jewel was found. We had explored the entire house, every cupboard,
every chest, even the insides of the couches and the pockets of Jim’s
clothes--which he resented bitterly--and found nothing, and I must
say the situation was growing rather strained. Some one had taken the
jewels; they hadn’t walked away.
It was Flannigan who suggested the roof, and as we had tried every place
else, we climbed there. Of course we didn’t find anything, but after all
day in the house with the shutters closed on account of reporters, the
air was glorious. It was February, but quite mild and sunny, and we
could look down over Riverside Drive and the Hudson, and even recognize
people we knew on horseback and in cars. It was a pathetic joy, and we
lined up along the parapet and watched the motor boats racing on the
river, and tried to feel that we were in the world as well as of it, but
it was very hard.
Betty had been making tea for Aunt Selina, and of course when she heard
us up there, she followed, tray and all, and we drank Aunt Selina’s tea
and had the first really nice time of the day. Bella had come up, too,
but she was still standoffish and queer, and she stood leaning against a
chimney and staring out over the river. After a little Mr. Harbison put
down his cup and went over to her, and they talked quite confidentially
for a long time. I thought it bad taste in Bella, under the
circumstances, after snubbing Dallas and Max, and of course treating Jim
like the dirt under her feet, to turn right around and be lovely to Mr.
Harbison. It was hard for Jim.
Max came and sat beside me, and Flannigan, who had been sent down for
more cups, passed tea, putting the tray on top of the chimney. Jim was
sitting grumpily on the roof, with his feet folded under him, playing
Canfield in the shadow of the parapet, buying the deck out of one pocket
and putting his winnings in the other. He was watching Bella, too, and
she knew it, and she strained a point to captivate Mr. Harbison. Any one
could see that.
And that was the picture that came out in the next morning’s papers,
tea cups, cards and all. For when some one looked up, there were four
newspaper photographers on the roof of the next house, and they had the
impertinence to thank us!
Flannigan had seen Bella by that time, but as he still didn’t understand
the situation, things were just the same. But his manner to me puzzled
me; whenever he came near me he winked prodigiously, and during all the
search he kept one eye on me, and seemed to be amused about something.
When the rest had gone down to dress for dinner, which was being sent
in, thank goodness, I still sat on the parapet and watched the darkening
river. I felt terribly lonely, all at once, and sad. There wasn’t any
one any nearer than father, in the West, or mother in Bermuda, who
really cared a rap whether I sat on that parapet all night or not,
or who would be sorry if I leaped to the dirty bricks of the next
door-yard--not that I meant to, of course.
The lights came out across the river, and made purple and yellow streaks
on the water, and one of the motor boats came panting back to the yacht
club, coughing and gasping as if it had overdone. Down on the street
automobiles were starting and stopping, cabs rolling, doors slamming,
all the maddening, delightful bustle of people who are foot-free to
dine out, to dance, to go to the theater, to do any of the thousand
possibilities of a long February evening. And above them I sat on the
roof and cried. Yes, cried.
I was roused by some one coughing just behind me, and I tried to
straighten my face before I turned. It was Flannigan, his double row of
brass buttons gleaming in the twilight.
“Excuse me, miss,” he said affably, “but the boy from the hotel has left
the dinner on the doorstep and run, the cowardly little divil! What’ll
I do with it? I went to Mrs. Wilson, but she says it’s no concern of
hers.” Flannigan was evidently bewildered.
“You’d better keep it warm, Flannigan,” I replied. “You needn’t wait;
I’m coming.” But he did not go.
“If--if you’ll excuse me, miss,” he said, “don’t you think ye’d betther
tell them?”
“Tell them what?”
“The whole thing--the joke,” he said confidentially, coming closer.
“It’s been great sport, now, hasn’t it? But I’m afraid they will get on
to it soon, and--some of them might not be agreeable. A pearl necklace
is a pearl necklace, miss, and the lady’s wild.”
“What do you mean?” I gasped. “You don’t think--why, Flannigan--”
He merely grinned at me and thrust his hand down in his pocket. When
he brought it up he had Bella’s bracelet on his palm, glittering in the
faint light.
“Where did you get it?” Between relief and the absurdity of the thing,
I was almost hysterical. But Flannigan did not give me the bracelet;
instead, it struck me his tone was suddenly severe.
“Now look here, miss,” he said; “you’ve played your trick, and you’ve
had your fun. The Lord knows it’s only folks like you would play April
fool jokes with a fortune! If you’re the sinsible little woman you look
to be, you’ll put that pearl collar on the coal in the basement tonight,
and let me find it.”
“I haven’t got the pearl collar,” I protested. “I think you are crazy.
Where did you get that bracelet?”
He edged away from me, as if he expected me to snatch it from him and
run, but he was still trying in an elephantine way to treat the matter
as a joke.
“I found it in a drawer in the pantry,” he said, “among the dirty linen.
And if you’re as smart as I think you are, I’ll find the pearl collar
there in the morning--and nothing said, miss.”
So there I was, suspected of being responsible for Anne’s pearl collar,
as if I had not enough to worry me before. Of course I could have called
them all together and told them, and made them explain to Flannigan what
I had really meant by my delirious speech in the kitchen. But that
would have meant telling the whole ridiculous story to Mr. Harbison, and
having him think us all mad, and me a fool.
In all that overcrowded house there was only one place where I could be
miserable with comfort. So I stayed on the roof, and cried a little
and then became angry and walked up and down, and clenched my hands
and babbled helplessly. The boats on the river were yellow, horizontal
streaks through my tears, and an early searchlight sent its shaft like
a tangible thing in the darkness, just over my head. Then, finally,
I curled down in a corner with my arms on the parapet, and the lights
became more and more prismatic and finally formed themselves into a
circle that was Bella’s bracelet, and that kept whirling around and
around on something flat and not over-clean, that was Flannigan’s palm.