Tish: The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions Read online

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  "The outside edge, by George!" said Charlie Sands. "Theold sport!"]

  TISH

  The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions

  By MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

  _With Illustrations__by May Wilson Preston_

  1916

  CONTENTS

  MIND OVER MOTOR

  LIKE A WOLF ON THE FOLD

  THE SIMPLE LIFERS

  TISH'S SPY

  MY COUNTRY TISH OF THEE--

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  "The outside edge, by George!" said Charlie Sands. "The old sport!"

  Without cutting down her speed, bumped home the winner

  The real meaning of what was occurring did not penetrate to any of us

  It ended with Tish stalking off into the woods with the rabbit in onehand and the knife in the other

  As fast as she wet a bit of lawn, we followed with the pails

  "Get the canoe and follow. I'm heading for Island Eleven"

  "It's well enough for you, Tish Carberry, to talk about gripping a horsewith your knees"

  "The older I get, Aggie Pilkington, the more I realize that to take youanywhere means ruin"

  "It would be just like the woman to refuse to come any farther and spoileverything"

  MIND OVER MOTOR

  HOW TISH BROKE THE LAW AND SOME RECORDS

  I

  So many unkind things have been said of the affair at Morris Valleythat I think it best to publish a straightforward account of everything.The ill nature of the cartoon, for instance, which showed Tish in a pairof khaki trousers on her back under a racing-car was quite uncalledfor. Tish did not wear the khaki trousers; she merely took them alongin case of emergency. Nor was it true that Tish took Aggie along asa mechanician and brutally pushed her off the car because she was notpumping enough oil. The fact was that Aggie sneezed on a curve and fellout of the car, and would no doubt have been killed had she not beenthrown into a pile of sand.

  It was in early September that Eliza Bailey, my cousin, decided to goto London, ostensibly for a rest, but really to get some cretonne atLiberty's. Eliza wrote me at Lake Penzance asking me to go to MorrisValley and look after Bettina.

  I must confess that I was eager to do it. We three were very comfortableat Mat Cottage, "Mat" being the name Charlie Sands, Tish's nephew, hadgiven it, being the initials of "Middle-Aged Trio." Not that I regardthe late forties as middle-aged. But Tish, of course, is fifty. CharlieSands, who is on a newspaper, calls us either the "M.A.T." or the"B.A.'s," for "Beloved Aunts," although Aggie and I are not relatedto him.

  Bettina's mother's note:--

  Not that she will allow you to do it, or because she isn't entirely able to take care of herself; but because the people here are a talky lot. Bettina will probably look after you. She has come from college with a feeling that I am old and decrepit and must be cared for. She maddens me with pillows and cups of tea and woolen shawls. She thinks Morris Valley selfish and idle, and is disappointed in the church, preferring her Presbyterianism pure. She is desirous now of learning how to cook. If you decide to come I'll be grateful if you can keep her out of the kitchen.

  Devotedly, ELIZA.

  P.S. If you can keep Bettina from getting married while I'm away I'll be very glad. She believes a woman should marry and rear a large family!

  E.

  We were sitting on the porch of the cottage at Lake Penzance when Ireceived the letter, and I read it aloud. "Humph!" said Tish, puttingdown the stocking she was knitting and looking over her spectacles atme--"Likes her Presbyterianism pure and believes in a large family! Howold is she? Forty?"

  "Eighteen or twenty," I replied, looking at the letter. "I'm not anxiousto go. She'll probably find me frivolous."

  Tish put on her spectacles and took the letter. "I think it's your duty,Lizzie," she said when she'd read it through. "But that young womanneeds handling. We'd better all go. We can motor over in half a day."

  That was how it happened that Bettina Bailey, sitting on Eliza Bailey'sfront piazza, decked out in chintz cushions,--the piazza, of course,--sawa dusty machine come up the drive and stop with a flourish at the steps.And from it alight, not one chaperon, but three.

  After her first gasp Bettina was game. She was a pretty girl in a whitedress and bore no traces in her face of any stern religious proclivities.

  "I didn't know--" she said, staring from one to the other of us. "Mothersaid--that is--won't you go right upstairs and have some tea and liedown?" She had hardly taken her eyes from Tish, who had lifted theengine hood and was poking at the carbureter with a hairpin.

  "No, thanks," said Tish briskly. "I'll just go around to the garage andoil up while I'm dirty. I've got a short circuit somewhere. Aggie, youand Lizzie get the trunk off."

  Bettina stood by while we unbuckled and lifted down our traveling trunk.She did not speak a word, beyond asking if we wouldn't wait until thegardener came. On Tish's saying she had no time to wait, because shewanted to put kerosene in the cylinders before the engine cooled,Bettina lapsed into silence and stood by watching us.

  Bettina took us upstairs. She had put Drummond's "Natural Law in theSpiritual World" on my table and a couch was ready with pillows and aknitted slumber robe. Very gently she helped us out of our veils anddusters and closed the windows for fear of drafts.

  "Dear mother is so reckless of drafts," she remarked. "Are you sure youwon't have tea?"

  "We had some blackberry cordial with us," Aggie said, "and we all had alittle on the way. We had to change a tire and it made us thirsty."

  "Change a tire!"

  Aggie had taken off her bonnet and was pinning on the small lace cap shewears, away from home, to hide where her hair is growing thin. In hercap Aggie is a sweet-faced woman of almost fifty, rather ethereal. Shepinned on her cap and pulled her crimps down over her forehead.

  "Yes," she observed. "A bridge went down with us and one of the nailsspoiled a new tire. I told Miss Carberry the bridge was unsafe, but shethought, by taking it very fast--"

  Bettina went over to Aggie and clutched her arm. "Do you mean to say,"she quavered, "that you three women went through a bridge--"

  "It was a small bridge," I put in, to relieve her mind; "and only a footor two of water below. If only the man had not been so disagreeable--"

  "Oh," she said, relieved, "you had a man with you!"

  "We never take a man with us," Aggie said with dignity. "This one wasfishing under the bridge and he was most ungentlemanly. Quite refusedto help, and tried to get the license number so he could sue us."

  "Sue you!"

  "He claimed his arm was broken, but I distinctly saw him move it."Aggie, having adjusted her cap, was looking at it in the mirror. "Butdear Tish thinks of everything. She had taken off the license plates."

  Bettina had gone really pale. She seemed at a loss, and impatient atherself for being so. "You--you won't have tea?" she asked.

  "No, thank you."

  "Would you--perhaps you would prefer whiskey and soda."

  Aggie turned on her a reproachful eye. "My dear girl," she said, "withthe exception of a little home-made wine used medicinally we drinknothing. I am the secretary of the Woman's Prohibition Party."

  Bettina left us shortly after that to arrange for putting up Letitiaand Aggie. She gave them her mother's room, and whatever impulse shemay have had to put the Presbyterian Psalter by the bed, she restrainedit. By midnight Drummond's "Natural Law" had disappeared from my tableand a novel had taken its place. But Bettina had not lost her air ofbewilderment.

  That first evening was very quiet. A youn
g man in white flannels called,and he and Letitia spent a delightful evening on the porch talkingspark-plugs and carbureters. Bettina sat in a corner and looked at themoon. Spoken to, she replied in monosyllables in a carefully sweet tone.The young man's name was Jasper McCutcheon.

  It developed that Jasper owned an old racing-car which he kept in theBailey garage, and he and Tish went out to look it over. They verypolitely asked us all to go along, but Bettina refusing, Aggie and I satwith her and looked at the moon.

  Aggie in her capacity as chaperon, or as one of an association ofchaperons, used the opportunity to examine Bettina on the subject ofJasper.

  "He seems a nice boy," she remarked. Aggie's idea of a nice boy is onewho in summer wears fresh flannels outside, in winter less conspicuously."Does he live near?"

  "Next door," sweetly but coolly.

  "He is very good-looking."

  "Ears spoil him--too large."

  "Does he come around--er--often?"

  "Only two or three times a day. On Sunday, of course, we see more ofhim."

  Aggie looked at me in the moonlight. Clearly the young man from the nextdoor needed watching. It was well we had come.

  "I suppose you like the same things?" she suggested. "Similar tastesand--er--all that?"

  Bettina stretched her arms over her head and yawned.

  "Not so you could notice it," she said coolly. "I can't thick ofanything we agree on. He is an Episcopalian; I'm a Presbyterian. Heapproves of suffrage for women; I do not. He is a Republican; I'm aProgressive. He disapproves of large families; I approve of them, ifpeople can afford them."

  Aggie sat straight up. "I hope you don't discuss that!" she exclaimed.

  Bettina smiled. "How nice to find that you are really just nice elderlyladies after all!" she said. "Of course we discuss it. Is it anything tobe ashamed of?"

  "When I was a girl," I said tartly, "we married first and discussedthose things afterward."

  "Of course you did, Aunt Lizzie," she said, smiling alluringly. She wasthe prettiest girl I think I have ever seen, and that night she wasbeautiful. "And you raised enormous families who religiously walked tochurch in their bare feet to save their shoes!"

  "I did nothing of the sort," I snapped.

  "It seems to me," Aggie put in gently, "that you make very little oflove." Aggie was once engaged to be married to a young man namedWiggins, a roofer by trade, who was killed in the act of inspecting atin gutter, on a rainy day. He slipped and fell over, breaking his neckas a result.

  Bettina smiled at Aggie. "Not at all," she said. "The day of blind loveis gone, that's all--gone like the day of the chaperon."

  Neither of us cared to pursue this, and Tish at that moment appearingwith Jasper, Aggie and I made a move toward bed. But Jasper not going,and none of us caring to leave him alone with Bettina, we sat downagain.

  We sat until one o'clock.

  At the end of that time Jasper rose, and saying something about itsbeing almost bedtime strolled off next door. Aggie was sound asleep inher chair and Tish was dozing. As for Bettina, she had said hardly aword after eleven o'clock.

  Aggie and Tish, as I have said, were occupying the same room. I went tosleep the moment I got into bed, and must have slept three or four hourswhen I was awakened by a shot. A moment later a dozen or more shots werefired in rapid succession and I sat bolt upright in bed. Across thestreet some one was raising a window, and a man called "What's thematter?" twice.

  There was no response and no further sound. Shaking in every limb, Ifound the light switch and looked at the time. It was four o'clock inthe morning and quite dark.

  Some one was moving in the hall outside and whimpering. I opened thedoor hurriedly and Aggie half fell into the room.

  "Tish is murdered, Lizzie!" she said, and collapsed on the floor in aheap.

  "Nonsense!"

  "She's not in her room or in the house, and I heard shots!"

  Well, Aggie was right. Tish was not in her room. There was a sort ofhorrible stillness everywhere as we stood there clutching at each otherand listening.

  "She's heard burglars downstairs and has gone down after them, and thisis what has happened! Oh, Tish! brave Tish!" Aggie cried hysterically.

  And at that Bettina came in with her hair over her shoulders and askedus if we had heard anything. When we told her about Tish, she insistedon going downstairs, and with Aggie carrying her first-aid box and Icarrying the blackberry cordial, we went down.

  The lower floor was quiet and empty. The man across the street had putdown his window and gone back to bed, and everything was still. Bettinain her dressing-gown went out on the porch and turned on the light. Tishwas not there, nor was there a body lying on the lawn.

  "It was back of the house by the garage," Bettina said. "If onlyJasper--"

  And at that moment Jasper came into the circle of light. He had aNorfolk coat on over his pajamas and a pair of slippers, and he wasrunning, calling over his shoulder to some one behind as he ran.

  "Watch the drive!" he yelled. "I saw him duck round the corner."

  We could hear other footsteps now and somebody panting near us. Aggiewas sitting huddled in a porch chair, crying, and Bettina, in the hall,was trying to get down from the wall a Moorish knife that Eliza Baileyhad picked up somewhere.

  "John!" we heard Jasper calling. "John! Quick! I've got him!"

  He was just at the corner of the porch. My heart stopped and then rushedon a thousand a minute. Then:--

  "Take your hands off me!" said Tish's voice.

  The next moment Tish came majestically into the circle of light andmounted the steps. Jasper, with his mouth open, stood below looking up,and a hired man in what looked like a bed quilt was behind in theshadow.

  Tish was completely dressed in her motoring clothes, even to hergoggles. She looked neither to the right nor left, but stalked acrossthe porch into the house and up the stairway. None of us moved until weheard the door of her room slam above.

  "Poor old dear!" said Bettina. "She's been walking in her sleep!"

  "But the shots!" gasped Aggie. "Some one was shooting at her!"

  Conscious now of his costume, Jasper had edged close to the veranda andstood in its shadow.

  "Walking in her sleep, of course!" he said heartily. "The trip to-day wastoo much for her. But think of her getting into that burglar-proofgarage with her eyes shut--or do sleep-walkers have their eyesshut?--and actually cranking up my racer!"

  Aggie looked at me and I looked at Aggie.

  "Of course," Jasper went on, "there being no muffler on it, the racketwakened her as well as the neighborhood. And then the way we chasedher!"

  "Poor old dear!" said Bettina again. "I'm going in to make her sometea."

  "I think," said Jasper, "that I need a bit of tea too. If you will putout the porch lights I'll come up and have some."

  But Aggie and I said nothing. We knew Tish never walked in her sleep.She had meant to try out Jasper's racing-car at dawn, forgetting thatracers have no mufflers, and she had been, as one may say, hoist withher own petard--although I do not know what a petard is and have neverbeen able to find out.

  We drank our tea, but Tish refused to have any or to reply to ourknocks, preserving a sulky silence. Also she had locked Aggie out andI was compelled to let her sleep in my room.

  I was almost asleep when Aggie spoke:--

  "Did you think there was anything queer about the way that Jasper boysaid good-night to Bettina?" she asked drowsily.

  "I didn't hear him say good-night."

  "That was it. He didn't. I think"--she yawned--"I think he kissed her."