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.”
There is hardly any use trying to describe what followed.
Anne Brown began to cry, and talk about the children.
(She went to Europe once and stayed until they all
got over the whooping cough.) And Dallas said he had
a pull, because his mill controlled I forget how many
votes, and the thing to do was to be quiet and comfortable
and we would get out in the morning. Max took
it as a huge joke, and somebody found him at the telephone,
calling up his club. The Mercer girls were hysterically
giggling, and Aunt Selina sat on a stiff-backed chair
and took aromatic spirits of ammonia. As for
Jim, he had collapsed on the lowest step of the stairs,
and sat there with his head in his hands. When
he did look up, he didn’t dare to look at me.
The Harbison man was arguing with the impassive individual
on the top step outside, and I saw him get out his
pocketbook and offer a crisp bundle of bills.
But the man from the board of health only smiled and
tacked at his offensive sign. After a while Mr.
Harbison came in and closed the door, and we stared
at one another.
“I know what I’m going to do,” I
said, swallowing a lump in my throat. “I’m
going to get out through a basement window at the
back. I’m going home.”
“Home!” Aunt Selina gasped, jumping up
and almost dropping her ammonia bottle. “My
dear Bella! Home?”
