The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  "Habit!" Jim put in, trying to smile. "You see, Aunt Selina, it's—well, it's a habit I got into some time ago, and I—my arm does it without my thinking about it."

  "Habit!" Aunt Selina repeated, her voice thick with passion. Then she turned to me. "Go to your room at once!" she said in her most awful tone. "Go to your room and leave this—this shocking affair to me."

  But if she had reached her limit, so had I. If Jim chose to ruin himself, it was not my fault. Any one with common sense would have known at least to close the door before he went down on his knees, no matter to whom. So when Aunt Selina turned on me and pointed in the direction of the staircase, I did not move.

  "I am perfectly wide awake," I said coldly. "I shall go to bed when I am entirely ready, and not before. And as for Jim's conduct, I do not know much about the conventions in such cases, but if he wishes to embrace Miss Knowles, and she wants him to, the situation is interesting, but hardly novel."

  Aunt Selina rose slowly and drew the folds of her dressing gown around her, away from the contamination of my touch.

  "Do you know what you are saying?" she demanded hoarsely.

  "I do." I was quite white and stiff from my knees up, but below I was wavery. I glanced at Jim for moral support, but he was looking idolatrously at Bella. As for her, quite suddenly she had dropped her mask of indifference; her face was strained and anxious, and there were deep circles I had not seen before, under her eyes. And it was Bella who finally threw herself into the breach—the family breach.

  "It is all my fault, Miss Caruthers," she said, stepping between Aunt Selina and myself. "I have been a blind and wicked woman, and I have almost wrecked two lives."

  Two! What of mine?

  "You see," she struggled on, against the glint in Aunt Selina's eyes. "I—I did not realize how much I cared, until it was too late. I did so many things that were cruel and wrong—oh, Jim, Jim!"

  She turned and buried her head on his shoulder and cried; real tears. I could hardly believe that it was Bella. And Jim put both his arms around her and almost cried, too, and looked nauseatingly happy with the eye he turned to Bella, and scared to death out of the one he kept on Aunt Selina.

  She turned on me, as of course I knew she would.

  "That," she said, pointing at Jim and Bella, "that shameful picture is due to your own indifference. I am not blind; I have seen how you rejected all his loving advances." Bella drew away from Jim, but he jerked her back. "If anything in the world would reconcile me to divorce, it is this unbelievable situation. James, are you shameless?"

  But James was and didn't care who knew it. And as there was nothing else to do, and no one else to do it, I stood very straight against the door frame, and told the whole miserable story from the very beginning. I told how Dal and Jim had persuaded me, and how I had weakened and found it was too late, and how Bella had come in that night, when she had no business to come, and had sat down in the basement kitchen on my hands and almost turned me into a raving maniac. As I went on I became fluent; my sense of injury grew on me. I made it perfectly clear that I hated them all, and that when people got divorces they ought to know their own minds and stay divorced. And at that a great light broke on Aunt Selina, who hadn't understood until that minute.

  In view of her principles, she might have been expected to turn on Jim and Bella, and disinherit them, and cast them out, figuratively, with the flaming sword of her tongue. BUT SHE DID NOT!

  She turned on me in the most terrible way, and asked me how I dared to come between husband and wife, because divorce or no divorce, whom God hath joined together, and so on. And when Jim picked up his courage in both hands and tried to interfere, she pushed him back with one hand while she pointed the other at me and called me a Jezebel.

  Chapter XIX. THE HARBISON MAN

  She talked for an hour, having got between me and the door, and she scolded Jim and Bella thoroughly. But they did not hear it, being occupied with each other, sitting side by side meekly on the divan with Jim holding Bella's hand under a cushion. She said they would have to be very good to make up for all the deception, but it was perfectly clear that it was a relief to her to find that I didn't belong to her permanently, and as I have said before, she was crazy about Bella.

  I sat back in a chair and grew comfortably drowsy in the monotony of her voice. It was a name that brought me to myself with a jerk.

  "Mr. Harbison!" Aunt Selina was saying. "Then bring him down at once, James. I want no more deception. There is no use cleaning a house and leaving a dirty corner."

  "It will not be necessary for me to stay and see it swept," I said, mustering the rags she had left of my self-respect, and trying to pass her. But she planted herself squarely before me.

  "You can not stir up a dust like this, young woman, and leave other people to sneeze in it," she said grimly. And I stayed.

  I sat, very small, on a chair in a corner. I felt like Jezebel, or whatever her name was, and now the Harbison man was coming, and he was going to see me stripped of my pretensions to domesticity and of a husband who neglected me. He was going to see me branded a living lie, and he would hate me because I had put him in a ridiculous position. He was just the sort to resent being ridiculous.

  Jim brought him down in a dressing gown and a state of bewilderment. It was plain that the memory of the afternoon still rankled, for he was very short with Jim and inclined to resent the whole thing. The clock in the hall chimed half after three as they came down the stairs, and I heard Mr. Harbison stumble over something in the darkness and say that if it was a joke, he wasn't in the humor for it. To which Jim retorted that it wasn't anything resembling a joke, and for heaven's sake not to walk on his feet; he couldn't get around the furniture any faster.

  At the door of the den Mr. Harbison stopped, blinking in the light. Then, when he saw us, he tried to back himself and his dishabille out into the obscurity of the library. But Aunt Selina was too quick for him.

  "Come in," she called, "I want you, young man. It seems that there are only two fools in the house, and you are one."

  He straightened at that and looked bewildered, but he tried to smile.

  "I thought I was the only one," he said. "Is it possible that there is another?"

  "I am the other," she announced. I think she expected him to say "Impossible," but, whatever he was, he was never banal.

  "Is that so?" he asked politely, trying to be interested and to understand at the same time. He had not seen me. He was gazing fixedly at Bella, languishing on the divan and watching him with lowered lids, and he had given Jim a side glance of contempt. But now he saw me and he colored under his tan. His neck blushed furiously, being much whiter than his face. He kept his eyes on mine, and I knew that he was mutely asking forgiveness. But the thought of what was coming paralyzed me. My eyes were glued to his as they had been that first evening when he had called me "Mrs. Wilson," and after an instant he looked away, and his face was set and hard.

  "It seems that we have all been playing a little comedy, Mr. Harbison," Aunt Selina began, nasally sarcastic. "Or rather, you and I have been the audience. The rest have played."

  "I—I don't think I understand," he said slowly. "I have seen very little comedy."

  "It was not well planned," Aunt Selina retorted tartly. "The idea was good, but the young person who was playing the part of Mrs. Wilson—overacted."

  "Oh, come, Aunt Selina," Jim protested, "Kit was coaxed and cajoled into this thing. Give me fits if you like; I deserve all I get. But let Kit alone—she did it for me."

  Bella looked over at me and smiled nastily.

  "I would stop doing things for Jim, Kit," she said. "It is SO unprofitable."

  But Mr. Harbison harked back to Aunt Selina's speech.

  "PLAYING the part of Mrs. Wilson!" he repeated. "Do you mean—?"

  "Exactly. Playing the part. She is not Mrs. Wilson. It seems that that honor belonged at one time to Miss Knowles. I believe such things are not unknown in New York, on
ly why in the name of sense does a man want to divorce a woman and then meet her at two o'clock in the morning to kiss the place where his own wedding ring used to rest?"

  Jim fidgeted. Bella was having spasms of mirth to herself, but the Harbison man did not smile. He stood for a moment looking at the fire; then he thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his dressing gown, and stalked over to me. He did not care that the others were watching and listening.

  "Is it true?" he demanded, staring down at me. "You are NOT Mrs. Wilson? You are not married at all? All that about being neglected—and loathing HIM, and all that on the roof—there was no foundation of truth?"

  I could only shake my head without looking up. There was no defense to be made. Oh, I deserved the scorn in his voice.

  "They—they persuaded you, I suppose, and it was to help somebody? It was not a practical joke?"

  "No," I rallied a little spirit at that. It had been anything but a joke.

  He drew a long breath.

  "I think I understand," he said slowly, "but—you could have saved me something. I must have given you all a great deal of amusement."

  "Oh, no," I protested. "I—I want to tell you—"

  But he deliberately left me and went over to the door. There he turned and looked down at Aunt Selina. He was a little white, but there was no passion in his face.

  "Thank you for telling me all this, Miss Caruthers," he said easily. "Now that you and I know, I'm afraid the others will miss their little diversion. Good night."

  Oh, it was all right for Jim to laugh and say that he was only huffed a little and would be over it by morning. I knew better. There was something queer in his face as he went out. He did not even glance in my direction. He had said very little, but he had put me as effectually in the wrong as if he had not kissed me—deliberately kissed me—that very evening, on the roof.

  I did not go to sleep again. I lay wretchedly thinking things over and trying to remember who Jezebel was, and toward morning I distinctly heard the knob of the door turn. I mistrusted my ears, however, and so I got up quietly and went over in the darkness. There was no sound outside, but when I put my hand on the knob I felt it move under my fingers. The counter pressure evidently alarmed whoever it was, for the knob was released and nothing more happened. But by this time anything so uncomplicated as the fumbling of a knob at night had no power to disturb me. I went back to bed.

  Chapter XX. BREAKING OUT IN A NEW PLACE

  Hunger roused everybody early the next morning, Friday. Leila Mercer had discovered a box of bonbons that she had forgotten, and we divided them around. Aunt Selina asked for the candied fruit and got it—quite a third of the box. We gathered in the lower hall and on the stairs and nibbled nauseating sweets while Mr. Harbison examined the telephone.

  He did not glance in my direction. Betty and Dal were helping him, and he seemed very cheerful. Max sat with me on the stairs. Mr. Harbison had just unscrewed the telephone box from the wall and was squinting into it, when Bella came downstairs. It was her first appearance, but as she was always late, nobody noticed. When she stopped, just above us on the stairs, however, we looked up, and she was holding to the rail and trembling perceptibly.

  "Mr. Harbison, will you—can you come upstairs?" she asked. Her voice was strained, almost reedy, and her lips were white.

  Mr. Harbison stared up at her, with the telephone box in his hands.

  "Why—er—certainly," he said, "but, unless it's very important, I'd like to fix this talking machine. We want to make a food record."

  "I'd like to break a food record," Max put in, but Bella created a diversion by sitting down suddenly on the stair just above us, and burying her face in her handkerchief.

  "Jim is sick," she said, with a sob. "He—he doesn't want anything to eat, and his head aches. He—said for me—to go away and let him die!"

  Dal dropped the hammer immediately, and Lollie Mercer sat petrified, with a bonbon halfway to her mouth. For, of course, it was unexpected, finding sentiment of any kind in Bella, and none of them knew about the scene in the den in the small hours of the morning.

  "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 nobody 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.