Part 34 (1/2)
”I never did!” Myra Nell wrung her hands. ”Will you stand there and let me perish? Do you refuse to save me?”
”Where is Madame la Branche?” Norvin asked.
”Asleep. And Cousin Montegut is playing solitaire in the library.”
”Then who has the smallpox?”
”The cook! They took her screaming to the pest-house an hour after I came. I shall be the next victim; I feel it. We're shut up here for a _week_, maybe longer. Think of that! There's nothing to do, n.o.body to talk to, nothing to look at. We need another hand for whist.
I--I supposed somebody would volunteer.”
”I'd love to,” Rilleau called, faintly, from the curb, ”but I wouldn't survive a week. My heart is beating its last, and besides--I don't play whist.”
Mr. Cline called the attention of his companions to two figures which had appeared in the distance, and began to chant:
”The animals came in two by two, The elephant and the kangaroo,”
”Gentlemen, here come the porpoise and the antelope. We are now complete.”
The new arrivals proved to be Bernie Dreux and August Kulm, the latter a fat Teutonic merchant whose place of business was down near the river. Mr. Kulm had evidently run all the way, for he was laboring heavily and his gait had long since slackened into a stumbling trot.
His eyes were rolling wildly; his fresh young cheeks were purple and sheathed in perspiration.
Miss Warren exclaimed, crossly:
”Oh, dear! I didn't send for Bernie. I'll bet he's furious.”
And so it proved. When her half-brother's horrified alarm had been dispelled by the noisy group of rescuers it was replaced by the blackest indignation. He thanked them stiffly and undertook to apologize for his sister, in the midst of which Rilleau, who had now managed to regain his feet, suggested the formation of ”The Myra Nell Contagion Club.”
”Its object shall be the alleviation of our lady's distress, and its members.h.i.+p shall be limited to her rejected suitors,” he declared.
”We'll take turns amusing her. I'll appoint myself chairman of the entertainment committee and one of us will always be on guard. We'll sing, we'll dance, we'll cavort beneath the window, and help to while the dreary hours away.”
His suggestion was noisily accepted, then after an exchange of views Murray Logan confessed that he had bolted a directors' meeting, and that ruin stared him in the face unless he returned immediately.
Achille Marigny, it appeared, had unceremoniously fled from the trial of an important lawsuit, and Raymond Cline was needed at the bank.
Foote, Delavan, and the others admitted that they, too, must leave Miss Warren to her fate, at least until after 'Change had closed. And so, having put themselves at her service with extravagant protestations of loyalty, promising candy, books, flowers, a choir to sing beneath her window, they finally trooped off, half carrying the rotund Mr. Kulm, who had sprinted himself into a jelly-like state of collapse.
Rilleau alone maintained his readiness to brave the perils of smallpox, leprosy, or plague at Miss Warren's side, until Bernie informed him that the very idea was shocking, whereupon he dragged himself away with the accusation that all his heart trouble lay at her door.
”Oh, you spoiled it all!” Myra Nell told her brother, indignantly.
”You might at least have let _him_ come in. Cousin Althea would have chaperoned us.”
”The idea! Why _did_ you do such an atrocious thing?”
”Where you frightened, Norvin?” The girl beamed hopefully down upon him.
”Horribly. I'm not over it yet. I'm half inclined to act on Lecompte's suggestion and break in.”
She clapped her hands gleefully, whereupon the watchman arose, saying:
”No you don't!”