Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ I kind of like Christopher myself.”
“You would!” said Lily May, and turned her back on him.
But, as Tish said that night, we might as well employ him as anyone else.
“Do what we will,” she said, “we might as well recognize the fact that the presence of Lily May is to the other sex what catnip is to a cat. It simply sets them rolling. And,” she added, “if it must be somebody, better Christopher, who is young and presumably unattached, than an older man with a wife and children. ”

“ The china clock with wild roses on it that Aggie had painted herself had disappeared, and Tish herself had another attack of neuritis and had her right arm hung in a sling.
She was very noncommital when I commented on the bareness of the room.
“I’m sick of being cluttered up with truck,” she said. “We surround our bodies with too many things, and cramp them. The human body is divine and beautiful, but we surround it with—er—china clocks and what not, and it deteriorates.” ”

“ This explanation is not an apology for dear Tish, but a statement of her point of view.
Letitia Carberry has a certain magnificence of comprehension. If in this magnificence she loses sight of small things, if she occasionally uses perhaps unworthy methods to a worthy end, it is because to her they are not important. It is only the end that counts. ”

“ The thought of our dear friend altering the face her Creator gave her was a painful one, and both of us, I think, feared it as an index of a possible general demoralization, as too often happens in the movies. Aggie particularly feared the contacts with men, as mentioned by Hannah, in spite of Tish’s firm attitude. The well-known temptations of Hollywood were in both our minds.
“They aren’t paying her a thousand dollars a week just to ride, and so on,” Aggie said bitterly. “Did you ever see a picture without a love story? It isn’t only her neck she’s risking, Lizzie.” ”

“ I said sadly. “They are all gone, Christopher. Tish and Aggie and Lily May. Gone.”
“My God!” he said. “Lily May!”
“Canada,” I said. “Or maybe England; or Spain. I don’t know. But Aggie——”
“What do you mean?” yelled Christopher. “Canada or England?”
“They’ve been stolen. Abducted. By rum runners, Christopher,” I said. “But my dear Aggie——”
And at that minute I heard a sneeze from the house.
“Aggie!” I cried. “Aggie!”
Then Hannah and Mr. MacDonald came up. Mr. MacDonald picked up a bottle and said, “You wouldn’t believe me before. Is this eau de cologne or is it liquor?” ”

“ Neither Aggie nor I could speak for a moment. As I have said, our dear Tish had never shown any interest in the other sex. Indeed, I think I may say that Tish’s virginity of outlook regarding herself is her strongest characteristic. It is her proud boast that no man has ever offered her the most chaste of salutes, and her simple statement as to what would happen if one did has always been a model of firmness. ”

“ It was just after all this that Aggie’s cousin Will Hartford came to see her and to ask her to indorse a note for five hundred dollars. We were all struck by the change in him; he used to be a nice-looking man, rather fastidious about his clothes, but he looked thin and had a bad color that day, and as shabby as a person could be and go about.
Aggie was so sorry for him that she would have done what he asked, but Tish at once advised against it.
“Lending money to relatives is like lending seed to a canary bird,” she said. “You get paid only in song, and some of them can’t sing. ”

“ I take a nap every day. I am getting old.”
“Never!” said Aggie valiantly.
“No? When I need my glasses nowadays to see the telephone directory!”
“But they’re printing the names smaller, Tish.”
“Yes, and I dare say my arm is getting shorter also,” she returned with a sad smile. She pursued the subject no further, however, but went on knitting the bedroom slippers which are her yearly contribution to the Old Ladies’ Home, leaving Charlie Sands to gaze at her thoughtfully as he sipped his blackberry cordial.
But the fact is that Tish had outgrown the cottage life at Penzance, and we all knew it. ”

“ But Tish said the child was in her care, and she was to stay just where she was. And in the end Aggie crawled onto the bell buoy, and we placed one of the boxes on the platform as a seat for her.
“It will take only a short time,” were Tish’s final words, “to get to the coast-guard station. We shall return at once.”
But it was a painful sight, as we moved away, to see our poor Aggie thus marooned, watching us into the fog with wistful eyes and ever and anon striking the bell with the hammer as she sat on the box. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Aggie was taking a dose of her remedy for sea-sickness at the moment, and she did not see Tish’s eyes as they traveled from her to me, but I did.
“You couldn’t do it, Lizzie,” she said. “You’re too stout. But Aggie could.”
[Pg 143]
“Could what?” said Aggie, giving her a cold glance.
“Your duty,” said Tish gravely. “That bell must ring, Aggie. The fog is intense, and all about are—or may be—men who depend on its warning signal for their lives. Can we fail them?”
“I can,” said Aggie shortly.
Lily May said it was all nonsense, but “Give me a hammer and I’ll do it,” she said. ”

“ But I could not see Aggie.
I entered as quietly as possible and advanced into the hangar.
“Aggie!” I called in a low tone. “Aggie! Where are you?”
There was a silence, then from somewhere above came a sneeze, followed by Aggie’s voice, broken and trembling.
“On—on a r-r-rafter, Lizzie,” she said.
I could not believe my ears and advanced towards the sound. Suddenly Aggie yelled, and at the same moment the smaller balloon lurched and came toward me.
“Run!” Aggie yelled. “Run. She’s after you!” ”

“ Just what happened within a day or two to determine Tish’s later course, I cannot say. We know that she had a long talk with Mr. Macmanus himself, and that he maintained that his intentions were of the most honorable—namely, to earn a small salary—and that his idea was that the final embrace could be limited to his kissing her hand.
“I have ventured so to suggest, madam,” Hannah reported him as saying, “but they care nothing for art here. Nothing. They reduce everything to its physical plane, absolutely.” ”

“ It has been Tish’s theory for years that no decent woman ever appears without a flannel petticoat under her muslin one, and I shall never forget the severe lecture she read Aggie when, one warm summer day, she laid hers aside. It was therefore a serious shock to her to come home the next day and find Mrs. Schwartz scrubbing the kitchen floor, while Hannah was drinking a cup of tea and gossiping with her. ”

“ Tish knew nothing of our worry, and day after day we went out in the boat, watching for rum runners. On Tuesdays and Fridays we made our trips to the revenue boat, but on other days Aggie and I fished, while Tish stood erect with her glasses, sweeping the surface of the sea. She was particularly severe with the lobster men, and after showing her badge would search their boats carefully. On one such occasion a lobster fastened itself to her and remained unnoticed until Aggie gave a terrible scream. She had sat down on the thing.
But mostly life in the Swallow moved quietly enough. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I want to go off where I can eat a cup custard without her looking at my waistline, and can smoke an occasional cigarette without having to steal one of hers when she is out. I may even bob my hair.”
“She’ll smoke no cigarettes here,” Tish interjected. “And Annabelle Carter’s a fool. Always was and always will be. Bob her hair indeed!”
She read on: “I want you to take her, Tish, and show her that high principles still exist in the older generation. They seem to think we are all hypocrites and whited sepulchers. But most of all, I want to get her away from Billy Field. ”

“ But if anyone thinks that Will believed her he does not know Will Hartford. All he did was to dismiss the doctor, too, and then come back to the kitchen and moan about the way people treated Emmie.
“Even that doctor never understood her,” he said despondently. “And I must owe him two hundred dollars or so this minute! Sometimes, Letitia, I think there is no compassion left in the world. Even the neighbors neglect her nowadays; I don’t believe there has been a bowl of calf’s-foot jelly sent to her in months.”
“Really?” said Tish. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ But at least she achieved her purpose, and we limped into the untidy drive in front of the Hartford house in a considerably demoralized condition. The house was as run down as the property, and what with it being a mile beyond the village and isolated, and having a cemetery just across the road, it was as gloomy a place as ever I have laid eyes on. The front porch had not been swept for months, and the doorbell was disconnected, so we had to hammer for admission. ”

“ When we recall our California experience, Aggie and I date our first disappointment from the following day, Tish’s first at the studio.
Though Tish cannot be termed a handsome woman, she has a certain majesty of mien, which has its own charm. ”

“ A weaker spirit than Letitia Carberry might have been discouraged, but Tish was not daunted; and, although our next sitting was the last we held, since neither Aggie nor Hannah would so much as venture into a dark room after it, it was so conclusive that it left no room for doubt.
To be brief, Tish had always felt that in [Pg 234] materializing a goldfish we had done well, but not sufficiently well.
“A fish,” she said, “is a lower earth form. It is soulless and purely material, for there is no record of water in the higher planes of existence, since in the spirit we neither thirst nor bathe. ”

“ The first man was the captain, and while Aggie made us some fresh tea in the galley Tish confided to him our real purpose, and showed him her badge.
He seemed greatly impressed, and said, “If more people would see their duty and do it, we would get rid of the rum evil.”
He then said that they were also a part of the revenue fleet, or had been. He didn’t know how long they could stick it out.
“I’m all right,” he said. “But now you take Joe and Bill, there. They’re not normal any more; it’s the loneliness gets them. Nothing to do but wait, you see.” ”

“ She’s never been known to slice, pull or foozle. When she gets her eye on the ball it’s there for keeps. Outside of that, she’s a nice girl.”
“Why don’t you learn the game yourself?” Tish demanded.
“Because I can’t. I’ve tried. You must have heard me trying. I can’t even caddie for her. I look at her and lose the ball, and it has got to a stage now where the mere sight of me on the links costs her a stroke a hole. I’ll be frank with you,” he added after a slight pause. “I’m in love with her. Outside of golf hours she likes me too. ”

“ Will gives her and giving nothing back, I haven’t heard of it.”
“She’s his wife.”
“She’s not his wife,” said Tish. “She’s a cancer, that’s what she is. Cancers thrive, but the people who have ’em die. And he’s got her.”
It was that morning that Emmie decided to make the best of a bad job and see us, and all the time the nurse was fixing her up for the doctor’s visit she told us her symptoms. For a dying woman she certainly was particular about her appearance, for she was dressed up to beat anything in a silk nightgown, and with her hair crimped. ”

“ I’ve paid a nurse forty dollars a week for seven years and I’ve been needing a new suit for the last six of them. And we can’t keep help. There’s nobody there now but the nurse. Seems as though the feebler Emmie gets the worse they treat her.”
Well, he looked so forlorn that Tish sent Aggie out for some blackberry cordial.
“Is she in bed all the time?” she asked.
“She’s up and down. I carry her down to the living room once in a while, but I can’t do it often. I’m not so strong as I used to be.” ”

“ As Tish has been for many years a member of the W.C.T.U., she protested at once, but the taxi man seemed to think it funny until Tish turned on him.
“It is you,” she said, “and your kind who make it impossible to enforce the best law our nation has ever passed. If there is liquor in that bag,” she said to Lily May, “it will not remain in this apartment one instant. Lizzie, open the bag, and pour the wretched stuff into the kitchen sink.” ”