But here he stopped, with his eyes fixed on the roof overhead.
“Watch out!” he yelled. “Get back. Myrtle, she’ll fall on you.”
“Not at all,” said Tish’s calm voice from overhead. There was a rasping
sound, and then a long wire fell past the window. “Now,” she called
triumphantly, “let your policeman telephone for the Sheriff and a posse!
That was a party wire, and that farmhouse over there is on it. There
isn’t another telephone for ten miles.”
Well, I looked around for Myrtle, and she was on the guest room bed,
face down.
“Oh,” she groaned, “I wouldn’t have missed it for a trip to Europe. And
his face! Miss Lizzie, did you see his face?” She then got up suddenly
and put her arms around me. “I’m simply madly happy, Miss Lizzie,” she
said. “I have to kiss somebody, and since he—may I kiss you?”
Well, of course I allowed her to, but I was surprised. It was not
natural, somehow.
Myrtle came down soon after and said that Mr. Culver was bringing some
water from the well, and would he be allowed to come in with it? But
Tish was firm on this point. She gave her consent, however, to his
leaving the pail on the porch and then retiring to the chestnut tree. He
did so, whistling to signify that he was at a safe distance, and I then
carried it in.
“I say,” he called to me when he saw me, “this situation is getting on
my nerves. I carried off that policeman, for one thing. He was on duty.”
“You needn’t stay here.”
“I daresay not,” he replied rather bitterly. “But what I want to ask is
this: Won’t it be deucedly unpleasant for you three, when I report that
you deliberately put my car out of commission so I could not get back by
nine o’clock to register? Of course,” he went on, “a box of tacks may
have spilled itself on the road, but I never heard of a barbed wire
fence trying to crawl across a road and getting run over, like a snake.”
I reported this to Tish, and I saw that she was uneasy, although she
merely remarked that he still had two legs, and that she had not asked
him to follow us. All she had set out to do was to see that he didn’t
get married before he registered, and she was doing that to the best of
her ability. The rest was his affair.
It was six o’clock by that time, and Tish had had nothing to eat since
five in the morning, and none of us had had any luncheon. Although a
woman who thinks little or nothing of food, I found her, shortly
afterwards, in the pantry, looking into jars. There was nothing,
however, except some salt, a little baking powder and a package of dried
sage. But Aggie, going to an attic window to look for the policeman,
discovered about a quart of flour in a barrel up there, and scraping it
out, brought it down.
“I might bake some biscuits, Tish,” she suggested. “I feel that I’ll
have to have some nourishment. I’m so weak that my knees shake.”
“Myrtle,” Tish said abruptly, with that quick decision so characteristic
of her, “you might tell that worthless young man of yours to look in the
granary. Sometimes the Knowleses’ hens come over here, and I daresay
they’ve eaten enough off the place to pay for the eggs.”
But Myrtle, after a conference from the window, reported that Mr. Culver
had said he would get the eggs, if there were any, on condition that he
get his pro rata share of them.
“If there are ten eggs,” she said, “he wants two. And if there is an odd
number he claims the odd one.”
This irritated Tish, but at last she grudgingly consented. In a short
time, therefore, Mr. Culver knocked at the kitchen door.
“I am leaving,” he said, “eleven eggs, eight of undoubted
respectability, two questionable, and one that I should advise opening
into a saucer first. Also some corn meal from the granary. And if you
will set out a pail and come after me if I am wounded, I shall go after
a cow that I see in yon sylvan vale.”
His voice was strangely cheerful, but, indeed, the prospect of food had
cheered us all, although I could see that Tish was growing more and
more anxious, as time went on and no policeman appeared in the
Knowleses’ machine. However, we worked busily. Myrtle, building a fire
and setting the table with the Biggses’ dishes, and Aggie making
biscuits, without shortening, while Tish stirred the corn meal mush.
“Many a soldier in the trenches,” she said, “would be grateful for such
a frugal meal. When one reflects that the total cost of mush and milk is
but a trifle——”
Here, however, we were interrupted by Mr. Culver outside. He spoke in
gasps and we heard the pail clatter to the porch floor.
“I regretfully report——” he said, through the keyhole. “No milk. Wrong
sex. Sorry.”
Ten of the eggs proving good, we placed two of them on a plate with
three biscuits and a bowl of mush, and Tish carried it out, placing it
on the floor of the porch, much as she would have set it out for the
dog.
“Here,” she called. “And when you have finished you might go after that
accomplice of yours. He’s probably asleep somewhere.”
“Dear lady,” said Mr. Culver, “I would, but I dare not. A fiery
creature, breathing fury from its nostrils, is abroad and——”
But Tish came in and slammed the door.
It was after supper that we missed Tish. She was nowhere in the house,
and the kitchen door, which had been bolted, was unlocked. Aggie wrung
her hands, but Myrtle was quite calm.
“I shouldn’t worry about her,” she said. “She’s about as well able to
take care of herself as any woman I ever saw.”
It was now quite dark, and our fears increased. But soon afterwards Tish
came in. She went to the stove and pouring out a cup of hot water, drank
it in silence. Then she said:
“I’ve been to the Knowleses’. The dratted idiots are all away, probably
to the schoolhouse, registering. The car’s gone, and the house is
closed.”
“And the policeman?” I asked.
“I didn’t see him,” said Tish. But she did not look at me. She fell to
pacing up and down the kitchen, deep in thought.
“What time is it, Lizzie?” she asked.
“Almost eight.”
Here Tish gave what in another woman would have been a groan.
“It’s raining,” she observed, and fell to pacing again. At last she told
me to follow her outside, and I went, feeling that she had at last made
a decision. Her attitude throughout her period of cogitation had been
not unlike that of Napoleon before Waterloo. There were the same bent
head and clasped hands, the same melancholy mixed with determination.
Mr. Culver was sitting under his tree, with his coat collar turned up
around his neck. Tish stopped and surveyed him with gentle dignity.
“You may enter the house,” she said. “The country will gain nothing by
your having pneumonia, although personally I am indifferent. And, after
thinking over your case, I have come to this decision.” She paused, as
for oratorical effect. “I shall deliver you to your registration
precinct by nine o’clock,” she said impressively, “and immediately after
that, I shall see that you two are married. I am not young,” she went
on, “and perhaps I do not think enough of sentiment. But it shall never
be said of me that I parted two loving hearts, one of which may, before
the snow flies, be still and pulseless in a foreign grave.”
She then, still with that new air of melancholy majesty, led me to the
barn, leaving him staring.
It was there, by means of a key hanging round her neck, that Letitia
Carberry, great hearted woman and patriot that she is, bared her inner
heart to me. In the barn was a large and handsome ambulance, with large
red crosses on side and top, which she had offered to the government if
she might drive it herself. But the government which she was even then
so heroically serving had refused her permission, and Tish had buried
her disappointment in the bucolic solitude of her farm.
Such, in brief, was Tish’s tragic secret.
“I shall take it in to the city tonight, Lizzie,” she said heavily. “And
tomorrow I shall present it to the Red Cross. Some other hand than mine
will steer it through shot and shell, and ultimately into Berlin. It has
everything. There’s a soup compartment and—well,” she finished, “it is
doing its work even tonight. Get in.”
We found Aggie on the porch, having with her usual delicacy of feeling
left the lovers alone inside. When she saw the Ambulance, however, she
fell to sneezing violently, crying out between paroxysms that if Tish
was going to the war, she was also. But Tish hushed her sternly.
There was a good engine in the Ambulance. Tish said she had ordered a
fast one, because it was often necessary to run between shells, as it
were. She then shoved on the gas as far as it would go, and we were off.
After a time, finding it impossible to sit on the folding seats inside,
we all sat on the floor, and I believe Mr. Culver held Myrtle’s hand all
of the way.
He said little, beyond observing once that he felt a trifle queer about
leaving the policeman, who had been on duty when he picked him up at
the Court House, and who was now lost some forty-five miles from home,
in a strange land.
I am glad, in this public manner, to correct the report that on the
evening of June fifth a German Zeppelin made a raid over our country,
and that the wounded were hurried to the city in a Red Cross Ambulance,
traveling at break-neck speed.
At nine o’clock Mr. Culver was registered at Engine House number eleven,
fourteenth ward, third precinct.
At nine-fifteen Mr. Culver and Myrtle were married at the same address
by Mr. Ostermaier, standing in front of the fire truck.
But this should be related in detail. So bitter was Charlie Sands, so
uneasy about the license, and so on, that I feel in fairness to Tish
that I should relate exactly what happened.
At ten o’clock that night everything was over, and we had gathered in
Tish’s apartment while Hannah broiled a steak, for Tish felt that the
occasion permitted a certain extravagance, when Charlie Sands came in.
Behind him was a dishevelled young man, with wild eyes and a suitcase.
Charlie Sands stood and glared at us.
“Well!” he said. And then: “Where’s the young lady?”
“What young lady?” asked Tish, coldly.
The young man stepped forward, with his fists clenched.
“Mine!” he bellowed. “Mine! Don’t deny it. I recognize you. I saw
you—the lot of you. I saw you drag her into a car and kidnap her. I saw
that ass Culver and a policeman chasing you in another car. Oh, I know
you, all right. Didn’t I pay twenty-two dollars for a taxicab that got
three punctures all at once thirty miles from the city? _Now where is
she?_”
“Just a moment,” said Tish’s nephew, holding him back by an arm across
his chest. “Just remember that whatever my aunt has done was done with
the best intentions.”
“D—— her intentions! I want Myrtle.”
The dreadful truth must have come to Tish at that moment, as it did to
the rest of us. I know that she turned pale. But she rose and pointed
magnificently to the door.
“Leave my apartment,” she said majestically. And to Charlie Sands: “Take
that madman away and lock him up. Then, if you have anything to say to
me, come back alone.”
“Not a step,” said the young man. “Where’s my marriage license?
Where’s——”
But Charlie Sands pushed him out into the hallway and closed the door
on him. Then, with folded arms he surveyed us.
“That’s right!” he said. “Knit! I believe most pirates knit on off days.
Now, Aunt Letitia, I want the whole story.”
“Story?”
“About the license. He says the girl had the license.”
“What license?”
“Don’t evade!” he said sternly. “Where were you this afternoon?”
“If you want the truth,” said Tish, “although it’s none of your
business, Charlie Sands, and you can unfold your arms, because the pose
has no effect on me,—I was out rounding up a young man who had not
registered. I got him and brought him in to my precinct at five minutes
to nine.”
“And that’s the truth?”
“Go and ask Mr. Ostermaier,” said Tish, in a bored tone.
“But this boy outside——”
“Look here,” Tish said suddenly, “go and ask that noisy young idiot for
his blue card. It’s my belief he hasn’t registered and more than likely
he’s been making all this fuss so he’ll have an excuse if he’s found
out. How do we know,” she went on, gaining force with each word, “that
there _is_ a Myrtle?”
“By George!” said Charlie Sands, and disappeared.
It was then, for the first time in her valiant life, that I saw our Tish
weaken.
“Lizzie!” she groaned, leaning back in her chair. “That Culver was
married with another man’s name on the license. What’s more, I married
him to that flibbertygibbet who had just jilted him. What have I done?
Oh, what have I done?”
“They both seemed happy, Tish,” I tried to soothe her. But she refused
all consolation, and merely called Hannah and asked for some blackberry
cordial. She drank fully half a tumbler full and she recovered her poise
by the time Charlie Sands stuck his head through the door again.
“You’re right, most shrewd of aunts,” he said. “He’s been playing me for
a sucker all right. Not a blue card on him! And he belongs out of town,
so it’s too late.”
“It’s a jail matter,” said Tish, knitting calmly, although we afterwards
discovered that she had put a heel on the wristlet she was making.
“You’d better get his name, and I’ll notify the sheriff of his county in
the morning.”
Charlie Sands came over to her and stood looking down at her.
“Aunt Tish,” he said. “I believe you. I believe you firmly. I shall not
even ask about a young man named Culver, who went to get our marriage
license list at the Court House this afternoon and has not been seen
since. But I want to bring a small matter to your attention. That
policeman had not registered.”
He then turned and went toward the door.
“But I did, dear Aunt Letitia,” he said and was gone.
* * * * *
Tish came to see me the next afternoon, bringing the paper, which
contained a glowing account of her gift to the local Red Cross of a fine
ambulance. An editorial comment spoke of her public spirit, which for so
many years had made her a conspicuous figure in all civic work.
“The city,” it finished, “can do with many like our Miss ‘Tish’
Carberry.”
But Tish showed no exultation. She sat in a rocking chair and rocked
slowly.
“Read the next editorial, Lizzie,” she said, in a low voice.
I have it before me now, cut out rather raggedly, for I confess I was
far from calm when I did it.
* * * * *
“A SHAMEFUL INCIDENT.
“Perhaps nothing has so exposed this city to criticism as the conduct of
Officer Flinn, as shown in a news item in our columns exclusively.
Officer Flinn has been five years on the police force of this city. He
has until now borne an excellent record. But he did not register
yesterday, and on limping into the Central Station this morning told a
story manifestly intended to indicate temporary insanity and thus still
further disqualify him for the service of his country. His statement of
seeing three elderly women kidnap a young girl from in front of the
Court House, his further statement of following the kidnappers far into
the country, with a young man he cannot now produce, is sufficiently
outrageous.
“But, not satisfied with this, the inventive ex-officer went further and
added a night in a pigpen, constantly threatened by a savage bull, and a
journey of forty-five miles on foot when, early this morning, the animal
retired for a belated sleep!
“Representatives of this paper, investigating this curious situation,
found the farmhouse which Officer Flinn described as being the den of
the kidnappers and which he stated he had left in a state of siege, the
bandits and their victim within and the young man who had accompanied
the officer, without. Needless to say, nothing bore out his story. A
young married couple, named Culver, who are spending their honeymoon
there, knew nothing of the circumstances, although stating that they
believed that a neighboring family possessed a belligerent bull.
“It is a regrettable fact that the only scandal which marred a fine and
patriotic outburst of national feeling yesterday should have involved
the city organization. Is it not time that loyal citizens demand an
investigation into——”
* * * * *
“Never mind the rest, Lizzie,” Tish said wearily. “I suppose I’ll have
to get him something to do, but I don’t know what, unless I employ him
to follow me around and arrest me when I act like a dratted fool.”
She sighed, and rocked slowly.
“Another thing, Lizzie,” she said. “I don’t know but what Aggie was
right about Charlie Sands. I’ve been thinking it over, and I guess it
was evening, for I remember seeing a new moon just before he came, and
wishing he would be a girl. But I guess I was too late. If I’d known
about this war, I’d have wished it sooner. I’m a broken woman, Lizzie,”
she finished.
She put on her hat wrong side before, but I had not the heart to tell
her, and went away.
However, late that evening she called me up, and her voice was not the
voice of a broken creature.
“I thought you might like to come over, Lizzie,” she said. “That woman
below has told the janitor she is going to pour ammonia water down on my
tomato plants tonight, and I am making a few small preparations.”