We met Nettie Lynn on the street the other day, and she cut us all
dead. Considering the sacrifices we had all made for her, especially
our dear Tish, who cut a hole in her best rug on her account, this
ungrateful conduct forces me to an explanation of certain events which
have caused most unfair criticism. Whatever the results, it is never
possible to impugn the motives behind Tish’s actions.
As for the janitor of Tish’s apartment house maintaining that the fruit
jar buried in the floor was a portion of a still for manufacturing
spirituous liquors, and making the statement that Tish’s famous
blackberry cordial for medicinal use was fifty per cent alcohol--I
consider this beneath comment. The recipe from which this cordial is
made was originated by Tish’s Greataunt Priscilla, a painting of whom
hangs, or rather did hang, over the mantel in Tish’s living room.
The first notice Aggie and I received that Tish was embarked on one of
her kindly crusades again was during a call from Charlie Sands. We had
closed our cottage at Lake Penzance and Aggie was spending the winter
with me. She had originally planned to go to Tish, but at the last
moment Tish had changed her mind.
“You’d better go with Lizzie, Aggie,” she said. “I don’t always want to
talk, and you do.”
As Aggie had lost her upper teeth during an unfortunate incident at the
lake, which I shall relate further on, and as my house was near her
dentist’s, she agreed without demur. To all seeming the indications
were for a quiet winter, and save for an occasional stiffness in the
arms, which Tish laid to neuritis, she seemed about as usual.
In October, however, Aggie and I received a visit from her nephew, and
after we had given him some of the cordial and a plate of Aggie’s nut
wafers he said, “Well, revered and sainted aunts, what is the old girl
up to now?”
We are not his aunts, but he so designates us. I regret to say that by
“the old girl” he referred to his Aunt Letitia.
“Since the war,” I said with dignity, “your Aunt Letitia has greatly
changed, Charlie. We have both noticed it. The great drama is over, and
she is now content to live on her memories.”
I regret to say that he here exclaimed, “Like ---- she is! I’ll bet you
a dollar and a quarter she’s up to something right now.”
Aggie gave a little moan.
“You have no basis for such a statement,” I said sternly. But he only
took another wafer and more of our cordial. He was preventing a cold.
“All right,” he said. “But I’ve had considerable experience, and she’s
too quiet. Besides, she asked me the other day if doubtful methods were
justifiable to attain a righteous end!”
“What did you tell her?” Aggie inquired anxiously.
“I said they were not; but she didn’t seem to believe me. Now mark my
words: After every spell of quiet she has she goes out and gets in the
papers. So don’t say I haven’t warned you.”
But he had no real basis for his unjust suspicions, and after eating
all the nut wafers in the house he went away.
“Just one thing,” he said: “I was around there yesterday, and her place
looked queer to me. I missed a lot of little things she used to have.
You don’t suppose she’s selling them, do you?”
Well, Tish has plenty of money and that seemed unlikely. But Aggie and
I went around that evening, and it was certainly true. Her Cousin Mary
Evans’ blue vases were gone from the mantel of the living room, and her
Grandaunt Priscilla’s portrait was missing from over the fireplace.
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.”
“Surround it with clothes, Tish,” I suggested, but she waved me off.
“_Mens sana in corpore sano_,” she said.
She had wrenched her left knee, too, it appeared, and so Hannah let us
out. She went into the outside corridor with us and closed the door
behind her.
“What did she say about her right arm and her left leg?” she inquired.
When we told her she merely sniffed.
“I’ll bet she said she was sick of her aunt’s picture and that clock,
too,” she said. “Well, she’s lying, that’s all.”
“Hannah!”
“I call it that. She’s smashed them, and she’s smashed her Grandfather
Benton and the cut-glass salad bowl, and a window. And the folks below
are talking something awful.”
“Hannah! What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” Hannah wailed, and burst into tears. “The things
she says when she’s locked me out! And the noise! You’d think she
was killing a rat with the poker. There’s welts an inch deep in the
furniture, and part of the cornice is smashed. Neuritis! She’s lamed
herself, that’s all.”
“Maybe its a form of physical culture, Hannah,” I suggested. “They jump
about in that, you know.”
“They don’t aim to kick the ceiling and break it, do they?”
Well, that was quite true, and I’ll admit that we went away very
anxious. Aggie was inclined to return to the unfortunate incident of
the janitor and the furnace pipe when Tish was learning to shoot in the
basement some years ago, and to think that she had bought a muffler or
whatever it is they put on guns to stop the noise, and was shooting in
her flat. I myself inclined toward a boomerang, one of which Tish had
seen thrown at a charity matinée, and which had much impressed her. In
fact, I happened to know that she had tried it herself at least once,
for on entering her sitting room one day unexpectedly my bonnet was
cut off my head without the slightest warning. But Hannah had known
about the boomerang, and there would have been no need of secrecy.
However, it was not long before Tish herself explained the mystery, and
to do so now I shall return to the previous summer at Lake Penzance.
When we arrived in June we found to our dismay that a new golf course
had been laid out, and that what was called the tenth hole was
immediately behind our cottage. On the very first day of our arrival a
golf ball entered the kitchen window and struck Hannah, the maid, just
below the breast bone, causing her to sit on the stove. She was three
days in bed on her face and had to drink her broth by leaning out over
the edge of the bed. This was serious enough, but when gentlemen at
different times came to the cottage with parcels wrapped to look like
extra shoes, and asked Tish to keep them in the refrigerator on the
back porch, we were seriously annoyed. Especially after one of them
broke and leaked into the ice-tea pitcher, and Aggie, who is very fond
of iced tea, looked cross-eyed for almost half an hour.
Some of the language used, too, was most objectionable, and the
innocent children who carried the clubs learned it, for I cannot
possibly repeat what a very small urchin said to Tish when she offered
him a quarter if he would learn the Shorter Catechism. And even our
clergyman’s wife--the Ostermaiers have a summer cottage near us--showed
what we had observed was the moral deterioration caused by the game.
For instance, one day she knocked a ball directly into our garbage
can, which happened to have its lid off. Owing to the vines she could
not see us, and she hunted for some time, tearing at Aggie’s cannas as
though they were not there, and finally found her ball in the can.
“Do I pick it out or play it out, caddie?” she called.
“Cost you a shot to pick it out,” said the caddie.
“I’ll play it,” she said. “Give me a spoon.”
Well, it appeared that she did not mean a table spoon, although that
was certainly what she needed, for he gave her a club, and she began
to dig after the ball. She made eleven jabs at it, and then the can
overturned.
“Oh, damm!” she said, and just then Aggie sneezed.
“Darn!” said Mrs. Ostermaier, trying to pretend that that was what she
had said before. “Are you there, Miss Carberry?”
“I am,” Tish replied grimly.
“I suppose you never expected to see me doing this!”
“Well,” Tish said slowly, “if anyone had told me that I would find my
clergyman’s wife in my garbage can I might have been surprised. Hannah,
bring Mrs. Ostermaier the coal shovel.”
Looking back I perceive that our dear Tish’s obsession dated from that
incident, for when Mrs. Ostermaier had cleaned up and moved angrily
away she left the old ball, covered with coffee grounds, on the path. I
am inclined, too, to think that Tish made a few tentative attempts with
the ball almost immediately, for I found my umbrella badly bent that
night, and that something had cracked a cane left by Charlie Sands,
which Aggie was in the habit of using as a pole when fishing from the
dock. Strangely enough, however, her bitterness against the game seemed
to grow, rather than decrease.
For instance, one day when Aggie was sitting on the edge of our little
dock, fishing and reflecting, and Tish was out in the motor boat, she
happened to see a caddie on the roof looking for a ball which had
lodged there. She began at once to shout at him to get down and go
away, and in her indignation forgot to slow down the engine. The boat
therefore went directly through the dock and carried it away, including
that portion on which Aggie was sitting. Fortunately Aggie always
sat on an air cushion at such times, and as she landed in a sitting
position she was able to remain balanced until Tish could turn the boat
around and come to the rescue. But the combination of the jar and of
opening her mouth to yell unfortunately lost Aggie her upper set, as I
have before mentioned.
But it was not long before dear Tish’s argus eye had discovered a
tragedy on the links. A very pretty girl played steadily, and always at
such times a young man would skulk along, taking advantage of trees et
cetera to keep out of her sight, while at the same time watching her
hungrily. Now and then he varied his method by sitting on the shore of
the lake. He would watch her until she came close, and then turn his
head and look out over the water. And if ever I saw misery in a human
face it was there.
Aggie’s heart ached over him, and she carried him a cup of tea one
afternoon. He seemed rather surprised, but took it, and Aggie said
there was a sweetheart floating in it for him.
“A mermaid, eh?” he said. “Well, I’m for her then. Mermaids haven’t any
legs, and hence can’t play golf, I take it.” But he looked out over the
lake again and resumed his bitter expression. “You can’t tell, though.
They may have a water variety, like polo.” He sighed and drank the tea
absently, but after that he cheered somewhat and finally he asked Aggie
a question.
“I wish you’d look at me,” he said. “I want an outside opinion. Do I
look like a golf hazard?”
“A what?” said Aggie.
“Would you think the sight of me would cut ten yards off a drive, or a
foot off a putt?” he demanded.
“You look very nice, I’m sure,” Aggie replied. But he only got up and
shook the sand off himself and stared after the girl.
“That’s it,” he said. “Very nice! You’ve hit it.” Then he turned on her
savagely, to her great surprise. “If I weren’t so blamed nice I’d set
off a dozen sticks of dynamite on this crazy links and blow myself up
with the last one.”
Aggie thought he was a little mad.
We saw him frequently after that, never with the girl, but he began
to play the game himself. He took some lessons, too, but Tish had to
protest for the way he and the professional talked to each other. Mr.
McNab would show him how to fix his feet and even arrange his fingers
on the club handle. Then he would drive, and the ball would roll a few
feet and stop.
“Well, I suppose I waggled my ear that time, or something,” he would
say.
“Keep your eye on the ball!” Mr. McNab would yell, dancing about.
“Ye’ve got no strength of character, mon.”
“Let me kick it, then. I’ll send it farther.”
After that they would quarrel, and Tish would have to close the windows.
But Tish’s interest in golf was still purely that of the onlooker. This
is shown by the fact that at this time and following the incident of
the dock she decided that we must all learn to swim. That this very
decision was to involve us in the fate of the young man, whose name was
Bobby Anderson, could not have been foreseen, or that that involvement
would land us in various difficulties and a police station.
Tish approached the swimming matter in her usual convincing way.
“Man,” she said, “has conquered all the elements--earth, air and water.
He walks. He flies. He swims--or should. The normal human being to-day
should be as much at home in water as in the air, and vice versa, to
follow the great purpose.”
“If that’s the great purpose we would have both wings and fins,” said
Aggie rather truculently, for she saw what was coming. But Tish ignored
her.
“Water,” she went on, “is sustaining. Hence boats. It is as easy to
float the human body as a ship.”
“Is it?” Aggie demanded. “I didn’t float so you could notice it the
night you backed the car into the lake.”
“You didn’t try,” Tish said sternly. “You opened your mouth to yell,
and that was the equivalent of a leak in a ship. I didn’t say a leaking
boat would float, did I?”
We thought that might end it, but it did not. When we went upstairs to
bed we heard her filling the tub, and shortly after that she called us
into the bathroom. She was lying extended in the tub, with a Turkish
towel covering her, and she showed us how, by holding her breath, she
simply had to stay on top of the water.
“I advise you both,” she said, “to make this experiment to-night. It
will give you confidence to-morrow.”
We went out and closed the door, and Aggie clutched me by the arm.
“I’ll die first, Lizzie,” she said. “I don’t intend to learn to swim,
and I won’t. A fortune teller told me to beware of water, and that
lake’s full of tin cans.”
“She was floating in the tub, Aggie,” I said to comfort her, although I
felt a certain uneasiness myself.
“Then that’s where I’ll do my swimming,” Aggie retorted, and retired to
her room.
The small incident of the next day would not belong in this narrative
were it not that it introduced us to a better acquaintance with the
Anderson boy, and so led to what follows. For let Charlie Sands say
what he will, and he was very unpleasant, the truth remains that
our dear Tish’s motives were of the highest and purest, and what we
attempted was to save the happiness of two young lives.
Be that as it may, on the following morning Tish came to breakfast in
a mackintosh and bedroom slippers, with an old knitted sweater and the
bloomers belonging to her camping outfit beneath. She insisted after
the meal that we similarly attire ourselves, and sat on the veranda
while we did so, reading a book on the art of swimming, which she had
had for some time.
Although she was her usual calm and forceful self both Aggie and I were
very nervous, and for fear of the chill Aggie took a small quantity of
blackberry cordial. She felt better after that and would have jumped
off the end of the dock, but Tish restrained her, advising her to wet
her wrists first and thus to regulate and not shock the pulse.
Tish waded out, majestically indifferent, and we trailed after her.
Of what followed I am not quite sure. I know, when we were out to our
necks, and either I had stepped on a broken bottle or something had
bitten me, she turned and said:
“This will do. I am going to float, Lizzie. Give me time to come to the
surface.”
She then took a long breath and threw herself back into the water,
disappearing at once. I waited for some time, but only a foot emerged,
and that only for a second. I might have grown anxious, but it happened
that just then Aggie yelled that there was a leech on her, sucking her
blood, and I turned to offer her assistance. One way and another it was
some time before I turned to look again at Tish--and she had not come
up. The water was in a state of turmoil, however, and now and then a
hand or a leg emerged.
I was uncertain what to do. Tish does not like to have her plans
disarranged, and she had certainly requested me to give her time. I
could not be certain, moreover, how much time would be required. While
I was debating the matter I was astonished to hear a violent splashing
near at hand, and to see Mr. Anderson, fully dressed, approaching us.
He said nothing, but waited until Tish’s foot again reappeared, and
then caught it, thus bringing her to the surface.
For some time she merely stood with her mouth open and her eyes
closed. But at last she was able to breathe and to speak, and in spite
of my affection for her I still resent the fact that her first words
were in anger.
“Lizzie, you are a fool!” she said.
“You said to give you time, Tish.”
“Well, you did!” she snapped. “Time to drown.” She then turned to Mr.
Anderson and said, “Take me in, please. And go slowly. I think I’ve
swallowed a fish.”
I got her into the cottage and to bed, and for an hour or two she
maintained that she had swallowed a fish and could feel it flopping
about inside her. But after a time the sensation ceased and she said
that either she had been mistaken or it had died. She was very cold to
me.
Mr. Anderson called that afternoon to inquire for her, and we took
him to her room. But at first he said very little, and continually
consulted his watch and then glanced out the window toward the links.
Finally he put the watch away and drew a long breath.
“Four-seven,” he said despondently. “Just on time, like a train! You
can’t beat it.”
“What is on time?” Tish asked.
“It’s a personal matter,” he observed, and lapsed into a gloomy
silence.
Aggie went to the window, and I followed. The pretty girl had sent
her ball neatly onto the green and, trotting over after it, proceeded
briskly to give it a knock and drop it into the cup. He looked up at us
with hopeless eyes.
“Holed in one, I suppose?” he inquired.
“She only knocked it once and it went in,” Aggie said.
“It would.” His voice was very bitter. “She’s the champion of this part
of the country. She’s got fourteen silver cups, two salad bowls, a card
tray and a soup tureen, all trophies. 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. But the damned
game--sorry, I apologize--the miserable game is separating us. If she’d
break her arm or something,” he finished savagely, “I’d have a chance.”
There was a thoughtful gleam in Tish’s eye when he fell into gloomy
silence.
“Isn’t there any remedy?” she asked.
“Not while she’s champion. A good beating would help, but who’s to beat
her?”
“You can’t?”
“Listen,” he said. “In the last few months, here and at home, I’ve had
ninety golf lessons, have driven three thousand six hundred balls, of
which I lost four hundred and ninety-six, have broken three drivers,
one niblick and one putter. I ask you,” he concluded drearily, “did you
ever hear before of anyone breaking a putter?”
The thoughtful look was still in Tish’s eye when he left, but she
said nothing. A day or two after, we watched him with Mr. McNab, and
although he was standing with his back to the house when he drove, we
heard a crash overhead and the sheet-iron affair which makes the stove
draw was knocked from the chimney and fell to the ground.
He saw us and waved a hand at the wreckage.
“Sorry,” he called. “I keep a roofer now for these small emergencies
and I’ll send him over.” Then he looked at Mr. McNab, who had sat down
on a bunker and had buried his face in his hands.
“Come now, McNab,” he said. “Cheer up; I’ve thought of a way. If
I’m going to drive behind me, all I have to do is to play the game
backwards.”
Mr. McNab said nothing. He got up, gave him a furious glance, and
then with his hands behind him and his head bent went back toward the
clubhouse. Mr. Anderson watched him go, teed another ball and made a
terrific lunge at it. It rose, curved and went into the lake.
“Last ball!” he called to us cheerfully. “Got one to lend me?”
I sincerely hope I am not doing Tish an injustice, but she certainly
said we had not. Yet Mrs. Ostermaier’s ball----But she may have lost
it. I do not know.
It was Aggie who introduced us to Nettie Lynn, the girl in the case.
Aggie is possibly quicker than the rest of us to understand the
feminine side of a love affair, for Aggie was at one time engaged
to a Mr. Wiggins, a gentleman who had pursued his calling as master
roofer on and finally off a roof. [More than once that summer Tish had
observed how useful he would have been to us at that time, as we were
constantly having broken slates, and as the water spout was completely
stopped with balls.] And Aggie maintained that Nettie Lynn really cared
for Mr. Anderson.
“If Mr. Wiggins were living,” she said gently, “and if I played golf,
if he appeared unexpectedly while I was knocking the ball or whatever
it is they do to it, if I really cared--and you know, Tish, I did--I am
sure I should play very badly.”
“You don’t need all those ifs to reach that conclusion,” Tish said
coldly.
A day or two later Aggie stopped Miss Lynn and offered her some
orangeade, and she turned out to be very pleasant and friendly. But
when Tish had got the conversation switched to Mr. Anderson she was
cool and somewhat scornful.
“Bobby?” she said, lifting her eyebrows. “Isn’t he screamingly funny on
the links!”
“He’s a very fine young man,” Tish observed, eying her steadily.
“He has no temperament.”
“He has a good disposition. That’s something.”
“Oh, yes,” she admitted carelessly. “He’s as gentle as a lamb.”
Tish talked it over after she had gone. She said that the girl was all
right, but that conceit over her game had ruined her, and that the only
cure was for Bobby to learn and then beat her to death in a tournament
or something, but that Bobby evidently couldn’t learn, and so that was
that. She then fell into one of those deep silences during which her
splendid mind covers enormous ranges of thought, and ended by saying
something to the effect that if one could use a broom one should be
able to do something else.
We closed up the cottage soon after and returned to town.
Now and then we saw Nettie Lynn on the street, and once Tish asked us
to dinner and we found Bobby Anderson there. He said he had discovered
a place in a department store to practice during the winter, with a net
to catch the balls, but that owing to his unfortunate tendencies he had
driven a ball into the well of the store, where it had descended four
stories and hit a manager on the back. He was bent over bowing to a
customer or it would have struck his head and killed him.
“She was there,” he said despondently. “She used to think I was only a
plain fool. Now she says I’m dangerous, and that I ought to take out a
license for carrying weapons before I pick up a club.”
“I don’t know why you want to marry her,” Tish said in a sharp voice.
“I don’t either,” he agreed. “But I do. That’s the hell--I beg your
pardon--that’s the deuce of it.”
It was following this meeting that the mysterious events occurred
with which I commenced this narrative. And though there may be no
connection it was only a day or two later that I read aloud to Aggie
an item in a newspaper stating that an elderly woman who refused to
give her name had sent a golf ball through the practice net in a
downtown store and that the ball had broken and sent off a fire alarm,
with the result that the sprinkling system, which was a new type and
not dependent on heat, had been turned on in three departments. I do
know, however, that Tish’s new velvet hat was never seen from that
time on, and that on our shopping excursions she never entered that
particular store.
In coming now to the events which led up to the reason for Nettie Lynn
cutting us, and to Charlie Sands’ commentary that his wonderful aunt,
Letitia Carberry, should remember the commandment which says that
honesty is the best policy--I am sure he was joking, for that is not
one of the great Commandments--I feel that a certain explanation is
due. 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.
She has, too, a certain secrecy. But that is because of a nobility
which says in effect that by planning alone she assumes sole
responsibility. I think also that she has little confidence in Aggie
and myself, finding us but weak vessels into which she pours in due
time the overflow from her own exuberant vitality and intelligence.
With this in mind I shall now relate the small events of the winter.
They were merely straws, showing the direction of the wind of Tish’s
mind. And I dare say we were not observant. For instance, we reached
Tish’s apartment one afternoon to find the janitor there in a very ugly
frame of mind. “You threw something out of this window, Miss Carberry,”
he said, “and don’t be after denying it.”
“What did I throw out of the window?” Tish demanded loftily. “Produce
it.”
“If it wasn’t that it bounced and went over the fence,” he said, “I’d
be saying it was a flat-iron. That parrot just squawked once and turned
over.”
“Good riddance, too,” Tish observed. “The other tenants ought to send
me a vote of thanks.”
“Six milk bottles on Number Three’s fire escape,” the janitor went on,
counting on his fingers; “the wash line broke for Number One and all
the clothes dirty, and old Mr. Ferguson leaning out to spit and almost
killed--it’s no vote of thanks you’ll be getting.”
When she had got rid of him Tish was her usual cool and dignified self.
She offered no explanation and we asked for none. And for a month or so
nothing happened. Tish distributed her usual list of improving books
at the Sunday-school Christmas treat, and we packed our customary
baskets for the poor. On Christmas Eve we sang our usual carols before
the homes of our friends, and except for one mischance, owing to not
knowing that the Pages had rented their house, all was symbolic of the
peace and good will of the festive period. At the Pages’, however, a
very unpleasant person asked us for ---- sake to go away and let him
sleep.
But shortly after the holidays Tish made a proposition to us, and
stated that it was a portion of a plan to bring about the happiness of
two young and unhappy people.
“In developing this plan,” she said, “it is essential that we all be
in the best of physical condition; what I believe is known technically
as in the pink. You two, for instance, must be able to walk for
considerable distances, carrying a weight of some size.”
“What do you mean by ‘in the pink’?” Aggie asked suspiciously.
“What you are not,” Tish said with a certain scorn. “How many muscles
have you got?”
“All I need,” said Aggie rather acidly.
“And of all you have, can you use one muscle, outside of the ordinary
ones that carry you about?”
“I don’t need to.”
“Have you ever stood up, naked to the air, and felt shame at your
flaccid muscles and your puny strength?”
“Really, Tish!” I protested. “I’ll walk if you insist. But I don’t have
to take off my clothes and feel shame at my flabbiness to do it.”
She softened at that, and it ended by our agreeing to fall in with her
mysterious plan by going to a physical trainer. I confess to a certain
tremor when we went for our first induction into the profundities of
bodily development. There was a sign outside, with a large picture of a
gentleman with enormous shoulders and a pigeon breast, and beneath it
were the words: “I will make you a better man.” But Tish was confident
and calm.
The first day, however, was indeed trying. We found, for instance, that
we were expected to take off all our clothing and to put on one-piece
jersey garments, without skirts or sleeves, and reaching only to the
knees. As if this were not enough, the woman attendant said when we
were ready “In you go, dearies,” and shoved us into a large bare room
where a man was standing with his chest thrown out, and wearing only a
pair of trousers and a shirt which had shrunk to almost nothing. Aggie
clutched me by the arm.
“I’ve got to have stockings, Lizzie!” she whispered. “I don’t feel
decent.”
But the woman had closed the door, and Tish was explaining that we
wished full and general muscular development.
“The human body,” she said, “instantly responds to care and guidance,
and what we wish is simply to acquire perfect coördination. ‘The easy
slip of muscles underneath the polished skin,’ as some poet has put it.”
“Yeah,” said the man. “All right. Lie down in a row on the mat, and
when I count, raise the right leg in the air and drop it. Keep on doing
it. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
“Lizzie!” Aggie threw at me in an agony. “Lizzie, I simply can’t!”
“Quick,” said the trainer. “I’ve got four pounds to take off a
welterweight this afternoon. Right leg, ladies. Up, down; one, two----”
Never since the time in Canada when Aggie and I were taking a bath in
the lake, and a fisherman came and fished from a boat for two hours
while we sat in the icy water to our necks, have I suffered such misery.
“Other leg,” said the trainer. And later: “Right leg up, cross, up,
down. Left leg up, cross, up, down.” Aside from the lack of dignity
of the performance came very soon the excruciating ache of our weary
flesh. Limb by limb and muscle by muscle he made us work, and when we
were completely exhausted on the mat he stood us up on our feet in a
row and looked us over.
“You’ve got a long way to go, ladies,” he said sternly. “It’s a
gosh-awful shame the way you women neglect your bodies. Hold in the
abdomen and throw out the chest. Balance easily on the ball of the
foot. Now touch the floor with the finger tips, as I do.”
“Young man,” I protested, “I haven’t been able to do that since I was
sixteen.”
“Well, you’ve had a long rest,” he said coldly. “Put your feet apart.
That’ll help.”
When the lesson was over we staggered out, and Aggie leaned against a
wall and moaned. “It’s too much, Tish,” she said feebly. “I’m all right
with my clothes on, and anyhow, I’m satisfied as I am. I’m the one to
please, not that wretch in there.”
Tish, however, had got her breath and said that she felt like a new
woman, and that blood had got to parts of her it had never reached
before. But Aggie went sound asleep in the cabinet bath and had to be
assisted to the cold shower. I mention this tendency of hers to sleep,
as it caused us some trouble later on.
In the meantime Tish was keeping in touch with the two young people.
She asked Nettie Lynn to dinner one night, and seemed greatly
interested in her golf methods. One thing that seemed particularly to
interest her was Miss Lynn’s device for keeping her head down and her
eye on the ball.
“After I have driven,” she said, “I make it a rule to count five before
looking up.”
“How do you see where the ball has gone?” Tish asked.
“That is the caddie’s business.”
“I see,” Tish observed thoughtfully, and proceeded for some moments to
make pills of her bread and knock them with her fork, holding her head
down as she did so.
Another thing which she found absorbing was Miss Lynn’s statement that
a sound or movement while she drove was fatal, and that even a shadow
thrown on the ball while putting decreased her accuracy.
By the end of February we had become accustomed to the exercises
and now went through them with a certain sprightliness, turning back
somersaults with ease, and I myself now being able to place my flat
hand on the floor while standing. Owing to the cabinet baths I had lost
considerable flesh and my skin seemed a trifle large for me in places,
while Aggie looked, as dear Tish said, like a picked spare rib.
At the end of February, however, our training came to an abrupt end,
owing to a certain absent-mindedness on Tish’s part. Tish and Aggie
had gone to the gymnasium without me, and at ten o’clock that night I
telephoned Tish to ask if Aggie was spending the night with her. To
my surprise Tish said nothing for a moment, and then asked me in a
strained voice to put on my things at once and meet her at the door to
the gymnasium building.
Quick as I was, she was there before me, hammering at the door of the
building, which appeared dark and deserted. It appeared that the woman
had gone home early with a cold, and that Tish had agreed to unfasten
the bath cabinet and let Aggie out at a certain time, but that she had
remembered leaving the electric iron turned on at home and had hurried
away, leaving Aggie asleep and helpless in the cabinet.
The thought of our dear Aggie, perspiring her life away, made us
desperate, and on finding no response from within the building Tish
led the way to an alleyway at the side and was able to reach the fire
escape. With mixed emotions I watched her valiant figure disappear, and
then returned to the main entrance, through which I expected her to
reappear with our unhappy friend.
But we were again unfortunate. A few moments later the door indeed
was opened, but to give exit to Tish in the grasp of a very rude and
violent watchman, who immediately blew loudly on a whistle. I saw at
once that Tish meant to give no explanation which would involve taking
a strange man into the cabinet room, where our hapless Aggie was
completely disrobed and helpless; and to add to our difficulties three
policemen came running and immediately placed us under arrest.
Fortunately the station house was near, and we were saved the ignominy
of a police wagon. Tish at once asked permission to telephone Charlie
Sands, and as he is the night editor of a newspaper he was able to come
at once. But Tish was of course reticent as to her errand before so
many men, and he grew slightly impatient.
“All right,” he said. “I know you were in the building. I know how you
got in. But why? I don’t think you were after lead pipe or boxing
gloves, but these men do.”
“I left something there, Charlie.”
“Go a little further. What did you leave there?”
“I can’t tell you. But I’ve got to go back there at once. Every moment
now----”
“Get this,” said Charlie Sands sternly: “Either you come over with the
story or you’ll be locked up. And I’m bound to say I think you ought to
be.”
In the end Tish told the unhappy facts, and two reporters, the sergeant
and the policemen were all deeply moved. Several got out their
handkerchiefs, and the sergeant turned quite red in the face. One and
all they insisted on helping to release our poor Aggie, and most of
them escorted us back to the building, only remaining in the corridor
at our request while we entered the cabinet room.
Although we had expected to find Aggie in a parboiled condition the
first thing which greeted us was a violent sneeze.
“Aggie!” I called desperately.
She sneezed again, and then said in a faint voice, “Hurry up. I’b
dearly frozed.”
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 any more,” 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 herself.
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 gowfer. 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.
* * * * *
So far as we know, Nettie Lynn has never played golf since. She
impresses me as a person of her word. But why she should be so bitter
toward us we cannot understand. As dear Tish frequently remarks, who
could have foreseen that Mr. McNab would actually make a golfer out
of Bobby? Or that he would become so infatuated with the game as to
abandon practically everything else?
They are married now, and Hannah knows their cook. She says it is
sometimes nine o’clock at night in the summer before he gets in to
dinner.