Tish Plays the Game

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  We learned later that the man in charge had turned off all the electricity when he left, from a switch outside, and that Aggie had perspired copiously and been on the verge of apoplexy until six o’clock, and had nearly frozen to death afterwards. Tish draped a sheet around the cabinet, and the policemen et cetera came in. Aggie gave a scream when she saw them, but it was proper enough, with only her head showing, and they went out at once to let her get her clothing on.

  Before he put us in a taxicab that night Charlie Sands spoke to Tish with unjustifiable bitterness.

  “I have given the watchman twenty dollars for that tooth you loosened, Aunt Tish,” he said. “And I’ve got to set up some food for the rest of this outfit. Say, fifty dollars, for which you’d better send me a check.” He then slammed the door, but opened it immediately. “I just want to add this,” he said: “If my revered grandfather has turned over in his grave as much as I think he has, he must be one of the liveliest corpses underground.”

  I am happy to record that Aggie suffered nothing more than a heavy cold in the head. But she called Tish up the next morning and with unwonted asperity said, “I do thig, Tish, that you bight have put a strig aroud your figer or sobethig, to rebeber be by!”

  It was but a week or two after this that Tish called me up and asked me to go to her apartment quickly, and to bring some arnica from the drug store. I went as quickly as possible, to find Hannah on the couch in the sitting room moaning loudly, and Tish putting hot flannels on her knee cap.

  “It’s broken, Miss Tish,” she groaned. “I know it is.”

  “Nonsense,” said Tish. “Anyhow I called to you to stay out.”

  In the center of the room was a queer sort of machine, with a pole on an iron base and a dial at the top, and a ball fastened to a wire. There was a golf club on the floor.

  Later on, when Hannah had been helped to her room and an arnica compress adjusted, Tish took me back and pointed to the machine.

  “Two hundred and twenty yards, Lizzie,” she said, “and would have registered more but for Hannah’s leg. That’s driving.”

  She then sat down and told me the entire plan. She had been working all winter, and was now confident that she could defeat Nettie Lynn. She had, after her first experience in the department store, limited herself—in another store—to approach shots. For driving she had used the machine. For putting she had cut a round hole in the carpet and had sawed an opening in the floor beneath, in which she had placed a wide-mouthed jar.

  “My worst trouble, Lizzie,” she said, “was lifting my head. But I have solved it. See here.”

  She then produced a short leather strap, one end of which she fastened to her belt and the other she held in her teeth. She had almost lost a front tooth at the beginning, she said, but that phase was over.”

  “I don’t even need it anymore,” she told me. “To-morrow I shall commence placing an egg on the back of my neck as I stoop, and that with a feeling of perfect security.”

  She then looked at me with her serene and confident glance.

  “It has been hard work, Lizzie,” she said. “It is not over. It is even possible that I may call on you to do things which your ethical sense will at first reject. But remember this, and then decide: The happiness of two young and tender hearts is at stake.”

  She seemed glad of a confidante, and asked me to keep a record of some six practice shots, as shown by the dial on the machine. I have this paper before me as I write:

  1st drive, 230 yards. Slight pull.

  2nd drive, 245 yards. Direct.

  3rd drive, 300 yards. Slice.

  4th drive, 310 yards. Direct.

  5th drive. Wire broke.

  6th drive. Wire broke again. Ball went through window pane. Probably hit dog, as considerable howling outside.

  She then showed me her clubs, of which she had some forty-six, not all of which, however, she approved of. It was at that time that dear Tish taught me the names of some of them, such as niblick, stymie, cleek, mashie, putter, stance, and brassie, and observed mysteriously that I would need my knowledge later on. She also advised that before going back to Penzance we walk increasing distances every day.

  “Because,” she said, “I shall need my two devoted friends this summer; need them perhaps as never before.”

  I am bound to confess, however, that on our return to Penzance Tish’s first outdoor work at golf was a disappointment. She had a small ritual when getting ready; thus she would say, firmly, suiting the action to the phrase: “Tee ball. Feet in line with ball, advance right foot six inches, place club, overlap right thumb over left thumb, drop arms, left wrist rigid, head down, eye on the ball, shoulders steady, body still. Drive!” Having driven she then stood and counted five slowly before looking up.

  At first, however, she did not hit the ball, or would send it only a short distance. But she worked all day, every day, and we soon saw a great improvement. As she had prophesied, she used us a great deal. For instance, to steady her nerves she would have us speak to her when driving, and even fire a revolver out toward the lake.

  We were obliged to stop this, however, for we were in the habit of using the barrel buoy of the people next door to shoot at, until we learned that it was really not a buoy at all, but some fine old whiskey which they were thus concealing, and which leaked out through the bullet holes.

  We were glad to find that Nettie Lynn and Bobby were better friends than they had been the year before, and to see his relief when Tish told him to give up his attempts at golf altogether.

  “I shall defeat her so ignominiously, Bobby,” she said, “that she will never wish to hear of the game again.”

  “You’re a great woman, Miss Carberry,” he said solemnly.

  “But you, too, must do your part.”

  “Sure I’ll do my part. Name it to me, and that is all,”

  But he looked grave when she told him.

  “First of all,” she said, “you are to quarrel with her the night before the finals. Violently.”

  “Oh, I say!”

  “Second, when she is crushed with defeat you are to extract a promise, an oath if you like, that she is through with golf.”

  “You don’t know her,” he said. “Might as well expect her to be through with her right hand.”

  But he agreed to think it over and, going out to the lake front, sat for a long time lost in thought. When he came back he agreed, but despondently.

  “She may love me after all this,” he said, “but I’m darned if I think she’ll like me.”

  But he cheered up later and planned the things they could do when they were both free of golf and had some time to themselves. And Mr. McNab going by at that moment, he made a most disrespectful gesture at his back.

  It is painful, in view of what followed, to recall his happiness at that time.

  I must confess that Aggie and I were still in the dark as to our part in the tournament. And our confusion as time went on was increased by Tish’s attitude toward her caddie. On her first attempt he had been impertinent enough, goodness knows, and Tish had been obliged to reprove him.

  “Your business here, young man,” she said, “is to keep your eye on the ball.”

  “That’s just what you’re not doing,” he said smartly. “Lemme show you.”

  Tish said afterwards that it was purely an accident, for he broke every rule of stance and so on, but before she realized his intention he had taken the club from her hand and sent the ball entirely out of sight.

  “That’s the way,” he said. “Whale ’em!”

  But recently her attitude to him had changed. She would bring him in and give him cake and ginger ale, and she paid him far too much. When Hannah showed her disapproval he made faces at her behind Tish’s back, and once he actually put his thumb to his nose. To every remonstrance Tish made but one reply.

  “Develop the larger viewpoint,” she would observe, “and remember this: I do nothing without a purpose.”

  “Then stop
him making snoots at me,” said Hannah. “I’ll poison him, that’s what I’ll do.”

  Thus our days went on. The hours of light Tish spent on the links. In the evenings her busy fingers were not idle, for she was making herself some knickerbockers from an old pair of trousers which Charlie Sands had left at the cottage, cutting them off below the knee and inserting elastic in the hem, while Aggie and I, by the shade of our lamp, knitted each a long woolen stocking to complete the outfit.

  It was on such an evening that Tish finally revealed her plan, that plan which has caused so much unfavorable comment since. The best answer to that criticism is Tish’s own statement to us that night.

  “Frankly,” she admitted, “the girl can beat me. But if she does she will continue on her headstrong way, strewing unhappiness hither and yon. She must not win!”

  Briefly the plan she outlined was based on the undermining of Nettie’s morale. Thus, Aggie sneezes during the hay-fever season at the mere sight of a sunflower. She was to keep one in her pocket, and at a signal from Tish was to sniff at it, holding back the resultant sneeze, however, until the champion was about to drive.

  “I’ll be thirty yards behind, with the crowd, won’t I?” Aggie asked.

  “You will be beside her,” Tish replied solemnly. “On the day of the finals the caddies will go on a strike, and I shall insist that a strange caddie will spoil my game, and ask for you.”

  It appeared that I was to do nothing save to engage Mr. McNab in conversation at certain times and thus distract his attention, the signal for this being Tish placing her right hand in her trousers pocket. For a sneeze from Aggie the signal was Tish coughing once.

  “At all times, Aggie,” she finished, “I shall expect you to keep ahead of us, and as near Nettie Lynn’s ball as possible. The undulating nature of the ground is in our favor, and will make it possible now and then for you to move it into a less favorable position. If at the fourteenth hole you can kick it into the creek it will be very helpful.”

  Aggie was then rehearsed in the signals, and did very well indeed.

  Mr. McNab was an occasional visitor those days. He was watching Tish’s game with interest.

  “Ye’ll never beat the champion, ma’m,” he would say, “but ye take the game o’ gowf as it should be taken, wi’ humility and prayer.”

  More than once he referred to Bobby Anderson, saying that he was the only complete failure of his experience, and that given a proper chance he would make a golfer of him yet.

  “The mon has aye the build of a gowfer,” he would say wistfully.

  It is tragic now to remember that incident of the day before the opening of the tournament, when Bobby came to our cottage and we all ceremoniously proceeded to the end of the dock and flung his various clubs, shoes, balls, cap and bag into the lake, and then ate a picnic supper on the shore. When the moon came up he talked of the future in glowing terms.

  “I feel in my bones, Miss Tish,” he said, “that you will beat her. And I know her; she won’t stand being defeated, especially by—” Here he coughed, and lost the thread of this thought. “I’m going to buy her a horse,” he went on. “I’m very fond of riding.”

  He said, however, that it was going to be very hard for him to quarrel with her the evening before the finals.

  “I’m too much in love,” he confessed. “Besides, outside of golf we agree on everything—politics, religion, bridge; everything.”

  It was then that Tish made one of her deeply understanding comments.

  “Married life is going to be very dull for you both,” she said.

  It was arranged that in spite of the quarrel he should volunteer to caddie for the champion the day of the strike, and to take a portion of Aggie’s responsibility as to changing the lie of the ball, and so forth. He was not hopeful, however.

  “She won’t want me any more than the measles,” he said.

  “She can’t very well refuse, before the crowd,” Tish replied.

  I pass with brief comment over the early days of the women’s tournament. Mrs. Ostermaier was eliminated the first day with a score of 208, and slapped her caddie on the seventeenth green. Tish turned in only a fair score, and was rather depressed; so much so that she walked in her sleep and wakened Aggie by trying to tee a ball on the end of her—Aggie’s—nose. But the next day she was calm enough, and kept her nerves steady by the simple device of knitting as she followed the ball. The result was what she had expected, and the day of the finals saw only Nettie Lynn and our dear Tish remaining.

  All worked out as had been expected. The caddies went on a strike that day, and before the field Nettie was obliged to accept Bobby’s offer to carry her clubs. But he was very gloomy and he brought his troubles to me.

  “Well, I’ve done it,” he said. “And I’m ruined for life. She never wants to see me again. It’s my belief,” he added gloomily, “that she could have bit the head off an iron club last night and never have known she had done it.”

  He groaned and mopped his face with his handkerchief.

  “I’m not sure it’s the right thing after all,” he said. “The madder she is the better she’ll play. All she’s got to do is to imagine I’m the ball, and she’ll knock it a thousand yards.”

  There was some truth in this probably, for she certainly overshot the first hole, and the way she said “Mashie!” to Bobby Anderson really sounded like an expletive. Tish won that hole, they halved the second, and owing to Aggie sneezing without apparent cause during Tish’s drive on the third, Nettie took it. On the fourth, however, Tish was fortunate and drove directly into the cup.

  We now entered the undulating portion of the course, and I understand that Bobby and Aggie both took advantage of this fact to place Nettie Lynn’s ball in occasional sand traps, and once to lose it altogether. Also that the device of sneezing during a putt was highly effective, so that at the ninth hole dear Tish was three up.

  Considering the obloquy which has fallen to me for my own failure to coöperate, I can only state as follows: I engaged Mr. McNab steadily in conversation, and when he moved to a different position I faithfully followed him; but I was quite helpless when he suddenly departed, taking an oblique course across the field, nor could I approach Tish to warn her.

  And on the surface all continued to go well. It was now evident to all that the champion was defeated, and that the champion knew it herself. In fact the situation was hopeless, and no one, I think, was greatly surprised when after driving for the fourteenth hole she suddenly threw down her club, got out her handkerchief and left the course, followed by Bobby.

  Our misfortune was that Aggie was ahead in the hollow and did not see what had happened. Her own statement is that she saw the ball come and fall into a dirt road, and that all she did was to follow it and step on it, thus burying it out of sight; but also that no sooner had she done this than Mr. McNab came charging out of the woods like a mad bull and rushed at her, catching her by the arm.

  It was at that moment that our valiant Tish, flushed with victory, came down the slope.

  Mr. McNab was dancing about and talking in broad Scotch, but Tish finally caught the drift of what he was saying—that he had suspected us all day, that we would go before the club board, and that Tish would get no cup.

  “You’ve played your last gowf on these links, Miss Carberry, and it’s a crying shame the bad name you’ve gien us,” was the way he finished, all the time holding to Aggie’s arm. It was thus I found them.

  “Very well,” Tish said in her coldest tone. “I shall be very glad to state before the board my reasons, which are excellent. Also to register a protest against using the lake front before my cottage for the cooling of beer, et cetera. I dare say I may go home first?”

  “I’ll be going with you, then.”

  “Very well,” Tish replied. “And be good enough to release Miss Pilkington. She was merely obeying my instructions.” Thus our lion-hearted Tish, always ready to assume responsibility, never weakening, always herse
lf.

  I come now to a painful portion of this narrative, and the reason for Nettie Lynn cutting us dead on the street. For things moved rapidly within the next few moments. Mr. McNab settled himself like a watchdog on our cottage steps, and there Tish herself carried him some blackberry cordial and a slice of coconut cake. There, too, in her impressive manner she told him the story of the plot.

  “Think of it, Mr. McNab,” she said. “Two young and loving hearts yearning for each other, and separated only by the failure of one of them to learn the game of golf!”

  Mr. McNab was profoundly moved.

  “He wouldna keep his eye on the ball,” he said huskily. “I like the lad fine, but he would aye lift his heid.”

  “If this brings them together you would not part them, would you?”

  “He wouldna fallow through, Miss Carberry. He juist hit the ball an’ quit.”

  “If they were married, and he could give his mind to the game he’d learn it, Mr. McNab.”

  The professional brightened. “Maybe. Maybe,” he said. “He has the body of the gowf r. If he does that, we’ll say na mair, Miss Carberry.”

  And, do what we would, Mr. McNab stood firm on that point. The thought of his failure with Bobby Anderson had rankled, and now he made it a condition of his silence on the day’s events that he have a free hand with him that summer.

  “Gie him to me for a month,” he said, “and he’ll be a gowfer, and na care whether he’s married or no.”

  We ate our dinner that night in a depressed silence, although Tish’s silver cup graced the center of the table. Before we had finished, Bobby Anderson came bolting in and kissed us each solemnly.

  “It’s all fixed,” he said. “She has solemnly sworn never to play golf again, and I’ve brought her clubs down to follow mine into the lake.”

  “You’d better keep them,” Tish said. “You’re going to need them.”

  She then broke the news to him, and considering the months she had spent to help him he was very ungrateful, I must say. Indeed, his language was shocking.

  “Me learn golf?” he shouted. “You tell McNab to go to perdition and take his cursed golf links with him. I won’t do it! This whole scheme was to eliminate golf from my life. It has pursued me for three years. I have nightmares about it. I refuse. Tell McNab I’ve broken my leg. Wait a minute and I’ll go out and break it.” But he could not refuse, and he knew it.