We went to bed early that night, sorely troubled, and I had fallen
asleep and was dreaming that Tish was trying to leap from an automobile
to a moving train, and that everytime she did it the train jumped to
another track, when the telephone bell rang, and it was Hannah. She
said that Tish wanted me, and to go over right away, but not to waken
Aggie.
I went at once and found all the lights going, and Tish in her bed,
bolt upright, with both eyes closed.
“Tish!” I cried. “Your eyes! Can’t you see?”
“Not through my eyelids,” she said witheringly. “Don’t be a fool,
Lizzie. Look at this stuff and then tell me what will take it off.”
I then saw that the rims of her eyelids were smeared with a black
paste which had hardened like enamel, and that they had become glued
together, leaving her, temporarily at least, sightless and helpless. My
poor Tish!
“What will take it off?” she demanded. “That idiot Hannah offered to
melt it with a burning match.”
“I don’t think anything but a hammer will do any good, Tish.”
I discovered then that Hannah had bought the make-up book, and that it
laid particular emphasis on beading the eyelashes. With her impatient
temperament Tish, although the shops were shut by that time, decided
to make the experiment, and had concocted a paste of glue and India
ink. She had experimented first on her eyebrows, she had thought
successfully, although when I saw her they looked like two jet
crescents fastened to her forehead; but inadvertently closing her eyes
after beading her lashes, she had been unable to open them again.
She and Hannah had tried various expedients, among them lard, the yolk
of an egg, cold cream and ammonia, but without result. I was obliged to
tell her that it was set like a cement pavement.
In the end I was able, amid exclamations of pain and annoyance from
Tish, to cut off her lashes, and later to shave her eyebrows with an
old razor which Hannah had for some unknown purpose, and although much
of the glue remained Tish was able to see once more. When I left her
she was contemplating her image in her mirror, and a little of her fine
frenzy of early enthusiasm seemed to have departed.
It is characteristic of Tish that, once embarked on an enterprise,
she devotes her entire attention to it and becomes in a way isolated
from her kind. Her mental attitude during these periods of what may be
termed mind gestation is absent and solitary. Thus I am able to tell
little of what preparations she made during the following weeks. I
do know that she went to church on her last Sunday with her bonnet
wrong side before, and that during the sermon she was unconsciously
assuming the various facial expressions, one after the other, to the
astonishment and confusion of Mr. Ostermaier in the pulpit.
But we also learned that she had again taken up her riding. The papers
one evening were full of an incident connected with the local hunt,
where an unknown woman rider had followed the hounds in to the death
and had then driven them all off and let the fox go free.
My suspicions were at once aroused, and I carried the paper to Tish
that night. I found her on her sofa, with the air redolent of arnica
and witch hazel, and gave her the paper. She read the article calmly
enough.
“I belong to the Humane Society, Lizzie,” she said. “Those dogs would
have killed it.”
“But what made you join the hunt?”
“I didn’t join the hunt,” she said wearily. “How did I know that
beast was an old hunter? I was riding along quietly when a horn blew
somewhere, and the creature just went over the fence and started.” Tish
closed her eyes. “We jumped eleven fences and four ditches,” she said
in a tired voice, “and I bit my tongue halfway through. I think we
went through some hotbeds, too, but I hadn’t time to look.”
“Tish,” I said firmly, “I want you to think, long and hard. Is it worth
it? What are they going to pay you a thousand dollars a week to risk?
Your beauty, your virtue or your neck? I leave it to you to guess.”
“It’s my neck,” said Tish coldly.
“Well, you’ve lost the head that belongs on it,” I retorted. And I went
home.
We were to leave on a Monday, and the Saturday before Tish called me by
telephone.
“I’ve been thinking, Lizzie,” she said. “A portion of my picture is
laid in the desert. We’d better take some antisnake-bite serum.”
“Where do you get it?”
“For heaven’s sake, don’t bother me with detail,” she snapped. “Try the
snake house at the Zoo.”