“Was?” said Tish in a dreadful voice. “Has anything happened to him?”
“My dear lady,” he said, “Eddie has passed into limbo again, as has Theodore. They lived their short but eventful lives wholly in her mind, and if Providence is good to me I shall go back to Washington and hand in my resignation. Anyone who could fall for a girl like that isn’t safe to be let loose.”
He then got up and gave a sort of groan. “The right man,” he said heavily, “could make something of her. But I’ve got my fingers crossed.”
Well, it turned out that he was actually a G-man or something of the sort, and when the Lee girl made up her story about kidnapers and her people hid her in the country he had been sent to watch her. But he never had believed that story, and I must say for her that when they got Aggie and the bag she told the truth for once, and we were released that night.
We went at once to the farm, to find our poor Aggie with her cold much worse and using language she had never used before.
“It was all right for you,” she said bitterly. “You were id a dice warb cell. But I was id a tree, with a policemad udder be, tryig to look like a dabbed bird! If you thik that’s fuddy, go ad try it.”
She was very resentful, as the policeman had not moved from her vicinity all night; and once she had had to sneeze, and he whipped out his revolver. After that, every now and then she had had to make a noise like a bird, for he was evidently suspicious. The worst trouble she had, however, was with a squirrel. It got used to her after a time, she said, and was evidently nesting, as little by little it bit off most of her new switch and carried it away.
Nothing would induce her to stay at the farm after that, and so we spent the remainder of the spring and summer in the city. But that fall we had a great surprise. We received an invitation to Lelia’s—or I should say Edith Lee’s—wedding; she was marrying the Bellamy man, after all!
We went to the church, and I must say she made a beautiful bride. Under her veil her hair did not seem as red as usual, but she had not entirely changed; for, coming down the aisle just beside our pew, Mr. Bellamy stepped on her dress and she said something under her breath.
He never stopped smiling, but all of us saw him give her arm quite a dreadful pinch, and Charlie Sands, who was sitting with us, leaned over and spoke to Tish.
“Don’t worry about them,” he said. “She’s under control. Everything’s under control from now on.” …
Well, that is the story. I have felt it necessary to tell it in detail, as one of the smart-aleck national magazines has recently referred to our dear Tish as “whilom kidnaper, Letitia Carberry.” This is most unfair, as it was Edith Lee herself—pretending to be Lelia Vaughn—who, while professing to get in touch with an Eddie who did not exist, called her anxious parents by telephone and said that she had been kidnaped. It was her idea about the sheet and the ransom money also; and I have always regarded it as outrageous that the sheriff sent us a bill for a new suit of clothes and for medical attention, including the removal of certain splinters from his person.
We have all recovered, save, perhaps, Aggie. She has been subject to nightmares ever since, and her nerves are not what they were. Once or twice at night I have found her standing up in her bed, clutching a bedpost and uttering a sort of feeble peep-peep, as though she were a bird.
But, as I have intimated, the whole affair has left Tish with a definite complex as to red lanterns. As a result, only a few days ago she drove past one at night, to discover too late that she had driven onto a large hoist which was carrying building materials to the upper stories of a new structure that was being erected.
It did not pause until it had reached the sixteenth floor, and as work ceased at that time, we were left there all night.
I shall never forget the expressions of the men on the ground when we were lowered there the next morning and drove away. But I shall also always remember Charlie Sands’ face when he brought in the evening paper.
“I am not a betting man,” he said, “but if you will tell me you were not the three women who spent last night in a car on top of the steel work of the new Standard Building, I will not only go to church next Sunday, I will put ten dollars on the plate.”
There was nothing to do but to tell him, and over a glass of blackberry cordial he regarded us, one after the other.
“I shall go to church anyhow,” he said solemnly.
THE OYSTER
I
IT WAS LAST MARCH that Tish, on her way home from church, picked up the Florida picture section of the morning paper and there saw a picture of an enormous fish. It was leaping out of the water, and a tired-looking man in a boat the size of the fish had a death grip on a rod, and had torn one sleeve out of his shirt.
Tish put down the paper thoughtfully.
“It is a curious thing,” she observed, “how little we know of the depths of the sea. We sail over it; ever and anon we bathe in it. But what does it contain? What goes on in its awful depths?”
“I don’t know, and what’s more, I don’t care,” said Aggie positively. “So far as I’m concerned any old thing can go on.”
Tish was not listening. It is characteristic of her that her logical mind, once seizing on a subject, pursues it relentlessly.
“Again,” she went on, “what do we know of the southern portion of our country? Of the old historic South? Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“True,” said Aggie, “and plenty goes on there too, I understand. If you’re leading up to Florida, Tish Carberry—”
But Tish had taken up the paper and was again gazing at the fish.
“‘Diamond-button tarpon,’” she read, “‘making its fourteenth leap.’ Unless that’s a double negative picture, that is a real fish, Lizzie. That man got a diamond button for getting it.”
“A diamond button!” Aggie said. “What good did a diamond button do him? What he needed was a bottle of liniment and a new shirt. And who wants one diamond button anyhow? If it was a dozen, or even a half dozen, it would mean something.”
Tish explained to her that it was a decoration, to be worn like the ribbon of the Croix de Guerre, but Aggie was unconvinced. Unlike Tish, who is rather radical in temperament, Aggie is a conservative, in addition to suffering badly from hay fever.
“I’m not going south,” she said flatly. “It may mean a diamond button to you, but it only means hay fever to me.”
It was quite clear to me, however, that Tish had already made up her mind to go south. She cut out the picture and placed it in her reticule, and before she left she gave Aggie a little talk on the advantages of sea air on the mucous passages of the nose, and also on the cry of the human skin for the rays of the sun.
“We wear too many clothes,” she said. “There are four million pores in the human body, and what do we do with them? Clothe them!”
But Aggie was still mutinous.
“My pores are my own private business,” she observed sulkily. And when Tish went on to speak of hours to be spent in the actinic rays of the sun on some sequestered beach, she said acidly that the sun gave her prickly heat, and that personally she preferred hay fever.
“I can blow my nose,” she added tartly.
Nor was she impressed when, a day or so later, Tish sent us a quantity of literature issued by the railroads and steamship companies. These showed beautiful islands with palm trees and oranges on them, and a great many people with practically nothing on them at all. I can still see our poor Aggie staring at those pictures, ignorant of what was to come, and declaring emphatically that only her Maker had ever seen her like that or ever would.
But in the end the literature had its effect, and we began to plan to go south.
It was at this time that Charlie Sands paid Tish a visit, and in view of his bitterness since, I consider it well to set down that conversation.
He was very low-spirited at the beginning. He said that there was to be a new managing editor appointed on his paper, and that if the boss knew his bus
iness he, Charlie Sands, would get the job.
“I’ve been working my fool head off,” he said. “I’ve even been taking Clara out, and if you knew Clara—!”
“Clara?”
“The daughter,” he explained. “I’ve been taking her to night clubs all night, and working all day. She likes to go.” Here he groaned. “Go! If you’d fasten a pedometer to that girl you’d find she travels about thirty miles every night around a dance floor. Believe me, when and if I land this job I’m going to bed for a week.”
Here he yawned, and said that that was enough of Clara; he never had liked her, and now he was fed up and running over, and bankrupt into the bargain.
“I’ve got so that when I hear her voice on the telephone I dig in and get the good old wallet,” he said.
Over a glass or two of blackberry cordial, however, he relaxed and grew more cheerful. It was then that Tish spoke of the Florida plan.
“It sounds all right,” he said thoughtfully. “I can’t see a hole in it at the moment. But in the light of past experience I feel that there is a hole, and that you’ll get into it. There always has been, and you always have.”
“Nonsense!” said Tish. “A simple vacation, with a bit of fishing!”
“You couldn’t be induced to do a bit of liquor running from the West Indies?”
As Tish belongs to practically all the dry organizations in the country she met this with silence, and he poured himself another glass of cordial.
“Well,” he said, “happy days, and wire me if you get into trouble.”
Who could have foretold that when trouble did come, as it did, it would be impossible to wire him? Or to wire anybody?
He was feeling very cheerful when he left, and said that the boss was going to Florida too.
“Be good to him if you happen on him,” he said. “He isn’t a bad sort, although savage at times. But if you see him, remember the job and cherish him. Make him happy. Feed his vanity. And when you’ve got him where you want him, mention me.”
I confess that this conversation made no great impression on me, being driven out of my mind by our preparations for departure. Tish had decided on a nice island on the west coast, with a good hotel and near two tarpon passes. There were many other islands about, as we verified by the map in the encyclopedia, and the passes led out in the Gulf of Mexico. In the spring the tarpon come in through these passes to lay their eggs, and later on we met a young man who said he had seen them doing it. They scrape a hole in the beach with their flippers, he said, and then lay the eggs. But while doing so they weep copiously. He had seen a very large one with tears streaming down its face.
One of the first things we did, I remember, was to purchase our fishing tackle. It appeared that for catching large fish it was necessary to have not only a stout pole, as they fight to free themselves, but a strong line and spool, or reel, with which to wind them in. Also that with this equipment went a sort of harness, made of leather and swung from the shoulders, and very much like the things used to carry flags in processions, in that it had a socket in front in which to rest the end of the pole.
The young man behind the counter was very affable. When Tish looked at the line and doubted its strength, he smiled and said it would bring in anything but a whale. Aggie sneezed violently at that, as some time before, while boating in the ocean, we had dropped our anchor and a fluke had caught in the blowhole of one of these great mammals. At first, when we began to move, I recall that Tish had mentioned the velocity of the tide. But it was not the tide, and the whale towed us for miles before finally blowing out the anchor.
“Now, just to show you how strong that line is,” he said, “only the other day a friend of mine was fishing off the center of the railroad bridge, when a tug came along. Well, that meant raising the center span, so my friend just tied his line there and left it. Pretty soon he heard a lot of shouting, and he looked over. And what do you think? As the span raised, his hook had caught in the belt worn by the tug captain, and there he was, forty feet in the air and the tug going on without him.”
“What size of man was he?” Tish inquired.
“Big heavy man. Must have weighed all of two hundred pounds.”
“But of course he wasn’t fighting. These fish fight. I understand.”
“Wasn’t fighting! I can tell you this. That captain almost bit a girder in two, and when they cut him down and he’d swum out, he about ruined this friend of mine. He’s getting about now, but he’s still on crutches.”
Our dear Tish did not trouble to explain, and armed with our purchases we departed.
For purposes of comfort Tish had planned that our fishing costumes were to consist of our one-piece bathing suits, shameful contraptions with practically no lower portion whatever, but over which we were each to wear a long skirt for decency in the boat, and a mackintosh when leaving the hotel. And in view of later developments I must explain that we were to have a boat, but no boatman, Tish having had considerable experience in this line; dating indeed from the time at Lake Penzance when she was taking her first lesson, and started with such an unexpected jerk that she threw out the instructor.
I have never forgotten that incident, as she did not then know how to stop the engine, and we were obliged to cruise about at top speed for twenty-one hours, before the gasoline gave out.
Our preparations, however, were delayed by a most unfortunate occurrence. Or rather two of them.
About a week before our date of departure Hannah called us up in the middle of the night and asked us to go right over.
“What on earth is it, Hannah?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said tearfully. “She’s locked in her room and groaning something awful. Every now and then I can hear her get out of bed and run in and turn on the shower bath, but she won’t let me in.”
Well, we dressed as fast as we could, and matters were as Hannah had said. The shower bath was running, and apparently Tish was in it, as she gave no heed to my knock.
“Tish!” Aggie cried. “Tish!”
In the end we decided to climb the fire escape and thus gain access to her, and this we did. But I shall never forget our horror when at last we stood outside her window and peered in through the pane. The room was in a state of confusion, and our dear Tish, in practically a state of nature, was half running about it. Even as we gazed she shot with incredible rapidity into the bathroom, and we could hear the shower running again.
We got through the window somehow, and could hear Hannah outside in the hall.
“Here’s the olive oil, Miss Tish,” she was quavering. “And some baking soda and a lump of ice. If you’d only let me in—!”
It was not until Tish was in bed, her swollen face and portions of her poor body eased with oil and soda, that we learned what had happened. With her usual foresightedness she had bought a sun machine, in order to inure herself against the actinic rays of the South, and although carefully instructed to expose herself but two minutes at the beginning, had dropped asleep!
Toward dawn, under the medicinal influence of a quantity of blackberry cordial, she fell asleep, and we stole away.
But it was several days before she was quite herself again; although the weather was cold, she could not don her flannels for some time, as the itching was very unpleasant.
The second incident was most unfortunate, as for a time it appeared that our poor Aggie would give up the trip altogether.
It had been Tish’s wise decision that, as we intended to be on the water most of the time and as boats were liable to accident, we should all take some swimming lessons. Aggie objected at once, and it was necessary to argue with her at great length.
“Water,” Tish said, “is a friendly element, not an unfriendly one. A large part of the human body is water; a large part of the earth’s surface is covered with water. Without water, where are we?”
“We’re right here,” said Aggie stubbornly. “Right here on good solid earth, and here I stay.”
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sp; But in the end she agreed to make the experiment. Although she refused to go into the pool beyond the shallow end, we did succeed in getting her to stoop and wet her shoulders. But the lesson was not a great success for any of us. Even Tish found the buoyancy of water rather less than she had expected, and gave up trying to learn the Australian crawl stroke in favor of learning to keep her head above water.
All in all, I think we were rather discouraged when the instructor departed and we left the pool. And it was then that the second incident occurred to which I have referred. Aggie was behind us, and I had taken off my suit and was standing under a shower when I heard a splash, accompanied by a shriek. As quickly as possible I threw a bath towel around me and rushed out, to see the form of our beloved comrade drifting aimlessly beneath the surface. What was my relief, however, to perceive that she was quite conscious, and that she was holding her nose with one hand while struggling with the other! Tish had by that time reached me, in time to see Aggie rise to the surface, draw a deep breath, take a fresh grip of her nostrils and submerge again with a look of black indignation at both of us.
“She will not drown, Lizzie,” Tish reassured me. “With that system she can go down almost indefinitely.”
Fortunately the swimming instructor arrived soon after, and marking by the bubbles which arose the spot where she had last gone down, he rescued her at once. She was none the worse for her experience, although she sneezed steadily for an hour and a half. The only serious result was that she said she was through with water forever.
“Dever agaid,” she said, as we stood about her. “Dever. I dod’t give a dab if I dever go fishig. Let the fish stay id the water, if they dod’t dow ady better. If they did dow better they wold’dt be fish.”
After a glass or two of blackberry cordial, however, she improved greatly, although she said she was still dizzy from her experience. One of the phases of her recovery was that she insisted that she could not focus her eyes and was seeing everything double. As a matter of fact, Tish shortly after heard her sneezing violently in her dressing room, and found her surveying her shoes tearfully.
Tish Marches On Page 13
