In order to understand the case of Emmie Hartford and the rather
drastic method by which our splendid Tish endeavored to effect a cure,
it is necessary to go back a few months to that strange but brief
period during which Letitia Carberry developed psychic power.
Not, indeed, that she used her power in the case referred to; on the
contrary, rather. But the influence of her earlier experiences is
plainly to be discovered by the careful reader, and since she has been
severely criticized for her attitude to Emmie, as well as for the
methods she pursued, it is only fair to her to revert briefly to the
incidents which preceded the Hartford affair.
It is, I admit, a long step from a book on palmistry to that frightful
evening when Aggie and I were compelled to sit under the eyes of a
policeman and listen to a number of men digging frantically in the
cellar of the Hartford house just beneath the room in which we waited.
But that is the way it began.
It was last Christmas that Charlie Sands, Tish’s nephew, sent her a
book on palmistry. Tish studied it carefully, and for some time Aggie
and I, and even Hannah, her maid, were obliged to make impressions of
our hands on a sheet of smoked paper while Tish studied the results.
Aggie, I recall, had a line down near her wrist which worried Tish
greatly, revealing as it did an unbridled and passionate nature,
although Aggie was certain that it was where she had been cut while
paring quinces some years ago. And Hannah certainly had the circle
which indicated death by drowning. But what is important to this
narrative is that our dear Tish discovered that she herself had the
psychic cross on both hands.
She at once undertook a study of such matters, although at first her
attitude was largely one of academic interest, she having always
stoutly maintained that under no circumstances, once having passed
over, would she care to be brought back and forced to inhabit even
temporarily the body of a medium she might not care for or might indeed
positively dislike.
And, I may say, her interest was largely impersonal until well on
into the spring. Then one night she had a most curious experience,
and there began that earnest investigation which was to lead us into
such strange paths, and was later, indeed, to see us driven from the
Hartford home under conditions so unpleasant that only a sense of
fairness to Tish compels me to record them.
Briefly, then, Tish was reading one evening in the living room of her
apartment, while Hannah in the kitchen was cutting out a nightgown
from a paper pattern. There was only the light from the reading
lamp, an auspicious fact, since we have since learned how fatal is
light to these delicate phenomena, and it so happened that there
was on the table beside her a vase of flowers and also a pitcher of
drinking water. Since both water and flowers greatly assist in psychic
manifestations, it will be readily seen that, without Tish knowing it,
the stage was already set for the drama which ensued.
Suddenly she heard a faint rustling, and on glancing up there was the
sleeve pattern of Hannah’s nightgown moving across the doorsill and
into the room!
It is unfortunate that, in her surprise, she dropped her book and thus
broke the ectoplasmic force, or whatever it may be called. The paper
instantly ceased to move. But her interest was naturally aroused, and
with her usual promptness she at once inaugurated a series of sittings,
consisting of the three of us--Aggie, Tish and myself. Later on,
for one experiment, we persuaded Hannah to join us, with results so
startling that neither she nor Aggie sat again. But even these early
sittings brought surprising results. I quote a few extracts from Tish’s
record, made each evening after the event, and thus as correct as
possible:
At one A.M. last night we secured heavy raps on the wall next to
the Ingersoll apartment, distinctly audible over the sound of the
phonograph.
By an unmistakable affirmative in the usual code of raps for yes and
no, Mr. Wiggins tonight told Aggie he had desired her to have his
cameo scarf pin, and not his sister, who has it.
C. S.--Charlie Sands--sat with us tonight. Vase of flowers and bowl
of water on floor. He requested that the spirits place something in
the bowl of water, and since it was Friday, suggested fish. In thirty
seconds we heard a loud plop, and found on turning on the light that a
goldfish was swimming in the bowl.
Brief as they are, these few extracts prove conclusively that we were
securing results. Already, a purely amateur circle as we were, we had
succeeded in securing a materialized form. More than that, the fish
remained some days, in every way acting like a real fish, even eating
the food we placed in the bowl. Indeed, it was only to leave us later
on under circumstances as amazing as those of its arrival.
It will be seen, then, that we were slowly but definitely progressing,
although small setbacks and annoyances came our way also. Hannah, for
instance, became so nervous that she constantly threatened to leave,
and on a storm coming up one night and Tish going into her room in her
nightdress to see if the window was closed, was only in time to catch
her before she leaped out of the window!
But in the main we were satisfied. True, our one attempt to utilize
a trumpet medium, strongly recommended by Mrs. Ostermaier as having
predicted Willie’s measles, was most unfortunate. We had invited
Charlie Sands to sit with us, and the early performance was most
surprising. Mr. Abraham, the medium, went into a deep trance and the
trumpet which had been placed on the floor moved about and touched
us all. Not only that, but it hovered in the air in front of Charlie
Sands, and after a number of kissing sounds, a young woman who said
her name was Katie and that she used to know him, asked him to go to a
private sitting at Mr. Abraham’s, because she didn’t want to make any
trouble for him by talking there.
“That’s right, Katie,” he said. “I don’t seem to remember you, but
be discreet anyhow. And you might pass that word along over there,
because a lot of folks could come back and make trouble here if they
wanted to.”
Well, she agreed to that and was just sending another kiss to him
through the trumpet, when she sneezed twice. Tish thought it was Aggie,
but it was not. And while this was being argued the medium in his chair
suddenly gave a terrific yelp.
“I’ve been injured!” he shouted. “Somebody’s played a trick on me! I’m
damaged! I’m hurt!”
Well, Aggie turned on the lamp, and Mr. Abraham was on his feet, making
dreadful faces and pulling at the seat of his trousers. Somebody had
put a tack with the point upright on his chair, and he must have been
standing up, for he had sat down on it. He was very much upset, and
left without waiting to collect his fee at all.
It turned out that Charlie Sands had suspected him right along, and had
blown some snuff into the trumpet when he was talking to Katie. It was
he, also, who had placed the tack on the chair.
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 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. We must do
better than that.”
As a result of this resolution we were, as I have said, compelled to
give up our sittings entirely; but not before we had had a success
beyond our wildest hopes.
On the night in question, then, we had coaxed Hannah to sit once
more, and in a very few minutes we heard undeniable sounds from the
neighborhood of the open window. As it was entirely dark we could see
nothing, but after a short time Hannah yelled in a terrified voice that
something was rubbing against her.
“Hush!” said Tish quietly. “If it is a spirit form it is welcome.
Welcome, friend.”
“It’s scratching my leg!” said Hannah in a dreadful tone.
She then let out a bloodcurdling yell and the next instant the spirit
form had leaped to Aggie’s shoulder, and she fell from her chair in a
dead faint. We were obliged to turn on the light, but it was a long
time before she could do more than moan. Naturally the force was
entirely dissipated by that time; but Hannah was able to show two long
scratches on her leg as evidence, and Aggie’s shoulder revealed three
or four minute punctures entirely through the skin.
A careful examination of the room also revealed a startling fact. The
goldfish had disappeared from its bowl!
It was, indeed, a remarkable achievement, marking as it did our advance
from the piscatorial to the animal plane, and indicating that we might
even hope before long for the materialized human body. But, alas for
Tish’s hopes, neither Aggie nor Hannah would sit again. So undermined,
indeed, was Hannah’s morale by the incident that she gave us a
considerable fright only a few days later.
Tish was experimenting with automatic writing at the time, and had
already secured a curious result. Her hand had drawn first a series of
straight horizontal lines and then crossed them with a similar number
of vertical ones, resulting in numerous small squares. Then, moving on
inexorably, it had just written beneath: “Number one horizontal,” when
we heard a terrific shriek from Hannah’s room, followed by another and
another.
The power, of course, was broken, and, on rushing to Hannah’s
assistance, we found that she had heard strange movements and sounds
from her closet and was convinced that there was a spirit there. It
turned out, however, to be only the Ingersolls’ cat; a troublesome
animal which had crawled in over the fire escape and was playing with a
mouse it had captured.
But this practically ended our experiments in that direction. As Tish
so justly observed, the craven heart has no place in the spirit world.
I have related it, however, because indirectly but surely it had its
influence in the Hartford matter.
* * * * *
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.
What’s the matter, anyhow, Will?” she demanded, gazing at him with her
usual searching glance. “You earn a good salary. You oughtn’t to be
borrowing seed--I mean money.”
“Well,” he said, “Emmie’s kind of frail. She has been most ever since I
married her. It’s mostly a matter of doctors and nurses.”
“Frail, how?” said Tish sharply. “Morally or physically? She used to be
all right. I can remember when she ate three eggs for breakfast and was
out in the pantry at eleven o’clock for a glass of milk.”
He looked pained.
“She doesn’t eat now at all, Letitia,” he said sadly. “She feeds most
everything that goes up on her tray to the dog. I don’t know how she
lives on what she eats.”
Well, poor Will’s story was certainly a sad one. About ten years ago
Emmie had been taken sick. Fainted. And from that time on she’d just
been up and down. Once they had thought it was a dropped stomach, and
about the time she was all strapped up for that along came a new doctor
and located something in her gall bladder. Her kidneys were wrong, too,
and they’d got a new specialist lately who was laying the trouble to
the thyroid gland.
“She’s had so many hypodermics that her poor skin is full of holes,” he
told us. “I guess they’ve used about a hundred needles on her.”
“It’s a pity somebody wouldn’t use a needle on you,” said Tish sharply,
looking at a hole in his sock.
But he only put his foot under his chair and went on about his troubles.
“I don’t like asking for help,” he said, “but every time I get a little
money it goes to doctors and nurses. 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.”
“Still, as thin as she must be----”
“Well, she isn’t exactly thin,” he said in an embarrassed manner. “It’s
a funny thing, but she’s put on weight. Of course, weight itself may be
a disease. I guess it is with her, anyhow.”
Tish glanced at him, but he was drinking his blackberry cordial and
didn’t notice it. He was certainly shabby, and his face had sort of
fallen in.
“What’s the matter with your teeth?” Tish said suddenly.
“I’ve lost one or two of them,” he admitted. “I haven’t liked to take
the time away from her to get them looked at. You see”--he looked away
from us, out of the window--“you see, I may not have her long. I don’t
want ever to feel that I--that I failed her in any way.”
“It’s a pity it isn’t Emmie who’s lost her teeth, and not you,” said
Tish. “Since she doesn’t need them and you do.”
But he looked pained at that; so she told him she would think things
over and let him know what Aggie would do, and he went away. On his way
out Tish asked him suddenly what sort of a dog they had, and he seemed
surprised.
“It’s a Pekingese,” he said, and went out with his shoulders bent, like
an old man.
After he had gone Aggie told us more about Emmie. She said it was a
great pity about her, not forty yet and on her deathbed, but that that
sort of weakness ran in the family.
“Her mother was delicate, too,” she said. “For twenty-five years she
never came downstairs. Her mother carried up every bite of food she
ate.”
“What happened to her then?” Tish put in, rousing herself. “Did she
die?”
“No, but her mother did,” Aggie said.
“And then who carried the tray?”
“Well, she began to get better about that time, and she lived to be
eighty. She would be living now, poor soul, but she got on a chair one
night to reach a piece of pie that somebody had hidden in the pantry,
and she fell off and broke her neck.”
Tish seemed very thoughtful as she went back to her apartment. She told
Aggie not to do anything about the note for a time; that she would go
and think over the situation. It was that night that she called me up
and asked me how large a Pekingese dog was, and I told her the one her
niece, Lily May Carter, had, weighed about seven pounds.
“You’re sure of that, are you?” she inquired. “It’s not the size of a
police dog or a mastiff?”
“Not unless it’s grown considerably since I saw it,” I assured her.
“Then,” she said, “I fancy things at Will Hartford’s are in a very bad
way. We’d better go there, Lizzie.”
“Do you think that Emmie’s going to die, Tish?”
“I do, indeed,” said Tish dryly. “At eighty or ninety, if I can
restrain myself so long, she will pass on. But Will Hartford is in
a bad way. And so, I should judge,” she added cryptically, “is the
Pekingese dog.”
We left two days later to see Emmie. It suited none of us to go. It was
almost time for the annual meeting at the church, where we invariably
serve the supper. Also Aggie was having an early attack of hay fever,
which the dust of the motor trip did nothing to allay. All in all, only
a strong sense of duty took us, a genuine spirit of self-sacrifice; and
when I think of that last evening there, with the house full of doctors
and policemen, I cannot restrain a certain sense of bitterness.
We acted entirely for the best. If the results were not what we
anticipated, surely the fault is not ours. And how true, indeed, are
these lines, secured only the other day by Tish through the medium of
automatic writing:
_There swims no goose so gray but soon or late
She finds some honest gander for her mate._
It was the night before our departure that Tish and I sat together for
advice on the situation, Aggie definitely refusing to join us.
We got rather feeble results, as the power was evidently low; but on
her asking if we should go to the Hartfords’, the table very clearly
rapped “Yes.” Whether, after I had gone, Tish received further
instructions or not I do not know, but I am inclined to think she did.
For one reason, I doubt if the idea of breaking a spring in her car and
thus prolonging our stay there originated with her. She is very fond of
her car.
On the other hand, the suggestion that I take along my small bathroom
scale was clearly her own. Also, I imagine, the ipecac and the raw
beef. Though of an idealistic type, the practical side of her nature is
also extremely well developed.
But that she succeeded in breaking not one spring, but an entire set
of them, was a proof undoubtedly that she was being carefully guided.
I still think, and Aggie agrees with me, that she could have done
so without us in the car, and thus have saved Aggie much physical
discomfort--at the third ditch her poor head went entirely through the
top.
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.
We learned later that the sound of the bell annoyed Emmie.
Will Hartford himself opened the door and I cannot say that he burst
into shouts of joy when he saw us. He had heard us drive up, and he
came out onto the front porch with his finger to his lips and a worried
look on his face.
“Sh!” he said. “She’s had a bad day, and she’s resting now. Most folks
leave their cars out in the road so as not to disturb her.”
“We had to drive in,” said Tish, “because of our luggage, Will.”
Well, he looked at the car then, and when he saw the bags in it he went
quite pale.
“Oh!” he said. “So you’re staying over-night, are you? Well, I guess
you’d better come in, but don’t make any noise. The nurse dropped the
thermometer a few minutes ago, and Emmie hasn’t yet recovered from the
shock.”
We tiptoed inside, and he went out and carried in our bags and the
bathroom scale. But he had not been quite prepared for the weight of
the scale, and just inside the door it slipped and fell with a terrible
crash on the floor. It caught his foot, too, and there was nothing
subdued either about the racket or the way he swore.
Tish said she took heart from that minute. It showed that he was not
entirely crushed. But there was a yelp from upstairs, and the next
minute a nurse in uniform dashed down the stairs.
“You’ve got the aromatic ammonia in your pocket,” she said to him.
“She’s fainted again.”
Well, he let go of his foot and gave her the bottle, and Tish watched
her rush up the stairs with a queer look on her face.
“Do you mean to say that that noise made Emmie faint?” she inquired.
“Her nerves are about gone,” he whispered, all subdued again. “Any
unexpected sound almost kills her. I’ve had to put a piece of felt on
the back porch, so the milkman can put down his bottles quietly.”
He limped into the living room and while Tish took the car to the
garage in the village we followed him. Just one look around was enough
for me, and the dust started Aggie to sneezing again at once. He closed
the door with a pained expression and said he was glad to see us once
more, and asked Aggie if she still made cream puffs with whipped-cream
filling. Then he groaned, and said that he was a criminal to be
thinking of the flesh when Emmie, as like as not, was near the end of
the road.
And at that moment the dog scratched at the door and he let it in. It
was a tiny thing and as thin as a rail, and when Tish came back from
leaving her car at the garage she took one look at it and said:
“Why don’t you feed that poor little beast?”
“Feed it!” he said. “It has worms, or something. It eats enough for two
men. Last night it ate Emmie’s sweetbread entire, and then came down
and tried to take my pork chop from me.”
He sighed and then limped to the door again.
“I’ll have some beds made up for you,” he said. “I guess we can manage
for one night.”
“It may be more than one night,” said Tish, looking him straight in the
eye. “They have to send away for those springs, Will.”
“Well, two nights then,” he said, and went out of the room, closing the
door softly behind him.
It did not require any keen intelligence to show us that we were not
welcome, and I said so to Tish.
“Personally,” I observed, “I imagine he would rather have the whooping
cough!”
“Not the whooping cough,” said Tish. “That’s noisy, Lizzie.” She then
walked to the door, opened it and slammed it hard. “There’s no death
here yet,” she said, “although there may be, if I don’t hold myself in.
Where’s that dog?”
Well, the poor little thing had crept under a sofa, and was almost too
feeble to crawl out.
“Eats her food, does he?” said Tish. “So nobody feeds him downstairs,
and he’s starving to death. Here,” she said, “try this, old boy.”
To our surprise she drew a package of raw chopped beef out of her
pocket, and the way that creature bolted it was a revelation. Tish
watched him carefully but said nothing, and before Will came back she
had burned the paper in the fireplace.
Well, we didn’t see Emmie before dinner. Will said somebody or other
had slammed a door and she had gone into a collapse. He’d sent for the
doctor again. As there was no servant, we pitched in and cooked what
was in the house, which wasn’t much, except for the broiled squab,
baked potato, two rolls, some green peas and a saucer of ice cream
which the nurse took up to Emmie.
“If she would only eat!” Will said. “And build up her strength. But she
just groans and turns her face away.”
It turned out that the nurse ate while Emmie was merely toying with her
tray upstairs and feeding Teddy from it. But that night Teddy did not
go upstairs. He had been fed and was asleep under the table. And it
wasn’t more than five minutes after the nurse and the rest of us had
sat down to our frugal repast when we heard Emmie feebly calling for
him.
“You see?” Will said, hopelessly. “She won’t touch it, and she’s
calling Teddy.”
“And Teddy isn’t going!” said Tish. “He’s under the table at my feet.”
Well, all through the meal we could hear Emmie weakly calling the dog,
and Will and the nurse kept running up to see if she was all right.
Once Will came down and tried to carry the dog up, but he ran out into
the kitchen and into the yard, and he couldn’t catch him.
“Emmie’s frightfully upset,” he said in a worried way. “She has fancies
like this, and I don’t like to cross her. But that dog has crawled
under the porch and I don’t know what to do.”
Tish said nothing. Later on the tray came down untouched, and Will said
Emmie was in a very bad way. She would not speak to him, and just lay
there staring at the ceiling.
“She looks as though she is staring into eternity,” he said. “To think
of me sitting here eating like an animal, and my poor wife----”
He was so overcome he had to leave the room, and Aggie got out her
handkerchief.
“I’m afraid it’s the end, Tish,” she whimpered.
“It is the end,” Tish said shortly, “or it will be unless somebody
holds me.”
It was that evening that Will took Tish to a window and pointed out
the lot he had selected in the cemetery across the road.
“It has a good view, you see, Letitia,” he told her. “And her sainted
mother lies there too. There is room for me beside her also. I shan’t
outlive her very long.”
“No,” Tish said dryly, “I imagine you’ll not outlive Emmie, Will; not
to amount to anything anyhow.”
We had a long talk with Will that night. We had dusted the living room
and started a fire there, and he seemed to relax. He even lighted a
cigarette, after Tish had told him that if he sat near the fire the
smoke would go up the chimney.
Emmie, it seemed, didn’t like tobacco smoke.
“It affects her heart,” he said. “I smoke outside, and then come in and
change my coat. The faintest odor sickens her.”
The trouble, he said, had been coming on for some years.
“We’d been talking about getting a car,” he said, “and I didn’t feel
able to. I remember she had just said she wasn’t as well as she might
be, and that she needed a car for fresh air; and when I said that
I couldn’t afford it she fell over just like that.” He snapped his
fingers. “In a heap. That was the beginning.”
“And it’s gone on ever since?”
“Yes. She just wouldn’t take care of herself. And I didn’t understand.
I used to ask her to do things. The second attack came when I asked her
to wash out a pair of golf hose for me. The laundress always shrunk
them, and I thought--well, she took cold, and it settled on her lungs.
Every now and then she has a hemorrhage.”
“A large one?” Tish asked.
“I’ve never been around when she’s had one, but they weaken her
terribly,” he said. “The worst thing about it all is I’m responsible. I
never did realize just how delicate she was until it was too late.”
We sat there for a while, and he seemed glad to talk and be warm at the
same time. But after a while the nurse tiptoed in and whispered that
Emmie wanted him, and he slipped out and creaked up the stairs.
“I always read to her in the evenings,” he explained as he left. “It’s
the least I can do, and it’s all she has.”
Tish was very thoughtful that evening, and after Will had read to Emmie
until she was sleepy, and tucked her up and fixed her window and taken
her ice water and moved her bell closer to her and given her an eggnog,
which was all, he said, she could keep down, he locked up the house and
we went to bed.
“Don’t worry if you hear me moving about in the night,” he said. “The
nurse has to sleep sometime.”
“And when do you sleep?” Tish inquired.
“Oh, I get a nap now and then, and then I sleep in the train going up
to business in the morning and coming back in the evening.”
The last thing I heard that night was Emmie’s bell ringing hard. I
heard Will get up and go into her room, and when I dropped off he was
still there, soothing her about something.
I had been asleep for perhaps three hours when I was wakened by a
terrific crash from somewhere below, and I leaped out of bed. Across
the hall I heard Will moving, and the next moment he ran down the
staircase. Tish was not in her room, and, convinced that something
dreadful had occurred, I hurried down in my nightdress.
I could hear Tish’s voice in the pantry, and Will moaning and saying
Emmie was dead, and when I opened the pantry door I thought at first
that she was.
She was lying on the floor in a dead faint, with a slice of bread and
butter in her hand, and Tish was standing over her keeping Will off.
“She’s all right,” she said. “Let her alone. She’ll come round all
right.”
“But she’s fainted,” Will yelled. “Get Miss Smith. Ring up the doctor.
Pour some water over her.”
Tish did this last. She turned on the cold-water tap, filled a dipper,
and flung its contents hard in Emmie’s face. And if ever I’ve seen a
fainting woman look furious Emmie did. But she only opened her eyes and
said weakly:
“Where am I?”
“You’re here, darling,” said Will, trembling all over. “You’ll be all
right now.”
“How did I get here?” she whimpered.
“You walked here,” Tish said dryly. “You didn’t fly, you know, Emmie.”
Well, she couldn’t have flown anywhere. She was as fat as butter, and
as healthy-looking a woman as ever I’ve seen. Will had run to telephone
for the doctor, and Emmie seemed to realize the bread and butter, for
she held up the hand that had it and said feebly:
“What’s this?”
“Just what it looks like, Emmie,” said Tish.
“Strange!” she whispered. “I don’t remember anything. Who found me
here, and when?”
“I did,” Tish said coldly. “You had just spread on the butter and were
reaching for the jam when I came in.”
She gave Tish a look of absolute hatred, and then the nurse ran in
and drove us out. Later on we heard poor Will carrying her up the
staircase, and when he bumped against the rail with her she yelped. He
twisted his back doing it, but when the doctor came he said it had been
a curious case of somnambulism.
“In her state of weakness,” he said, “it’s impossible to believe that
she walked down those stairs, Miss Carberry. She must have slid down.”
“She walked down. I was behind her.”
“Why on earth didn’t you stop her?”
“I had an idea that maybe she was hungry,” Tish said quietly.
* * * * *
We did not feed Teddy the next morning, but we weighed him when he
followed the breakfast tray to Emmie’s room. And when he came down,
having supposedly eaten all of Emmie’s breakfast, he had lost two
ounces!
Tish gazed at the scales angrily.
“As I thought!” she observed. “And that poor devil of a husband hasn’t
probably been out of this house at night for five years, or had a sock
darned in ten! If he had any sense he’d take up with another woman.”
“Why, Tish!” said Aggie, aghast.
“If there’s anything more immoral than that woman lying up there in
bed and taking everything 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. Just
before the nurse went out she sprayed her with violet water, and Emmie
stopped whining about serums and blood pressure long enough to say that
she had to use perfume because the smell of cooking in the house upset
her poor weak stomach.
“And Will is so thoughtless,” she said. “Would you believe that he
brought home spareribs and sauerkraut the other night? And it isn’t
more than ten days since he fried some onions for his supper! But I
suppose men are all alike.”
“No, Emmie,” Tish told her gently. “No, they are not. There are some
men who would as soon commit murder as not. But your Will isn’t that
sort. Anybody can see that.”
Well, Emmie eyed her suspiciously, but Tish went on asking her if all
the arrangements for the funeral were made, and if she would like us to
stay on until everything was over.
“We could put the house in order, and so on,” she said. “I dare say
Will will marry again, because the lonelier they are, the sooner they
do it; but we could leave things tidy. And he would have to wait a year
anyhow.”
“I should think he would,” said Emmie coldly. “And if you think I
intend to have this house put in order for Will’s second wife you can
think again. Anyhow, Will Hartford has never looked at another woman
and never will.”
“Not even at that nurse of yours?” Tish inquired. “I was just thinking
last night that I didn’t consider it exactly wise to leave these two
together as much as you do. She’s a right nice-looking girl.”
“I can’t say I admire your taste!” she said. But when the nurse came
back she gave her a long, hard look and then said she would take a rest
so as to be ready for the doctor’s visit.
“I don’t know if Will has told you,” she remarked, “but I’m not
supposed to have company. Excitement is my worst enemy.”
“Well, we’re not company, Emmie,” Tish told her. “You just go on and
be as sick as you like. And don’t worry about us. Nobody with a heart
would leave Will to go through the funeral by himself. And you might
tell us where your grave clothes are while you’re still able to speak.”
“They’re in the lower bureau drawer,” she said in a hard voice. And we
went out.
When the doctor came that day Tish waylaid him in the lower hall. And
he said Emmie Hartford could get out of bed and do a day’s washing any
minute she had a mind to. But he said also that if he told her so she
would only shop around for another doctor, who would tell her she had
something seriously wrong with her. He had not been paid for a long
time, but he did not mind that as much as the way she made him lose his
sleep.
“My wife says,” he stated, “that she seems to know the minute I’ve
taken my trousers off. I don’t know when I’ve slept a night through.
Why, if you’ll believe me, the alarm clock in the kitchen went off at
two o’clock the other morning and I got up in my sleep and was out to
the cemetery here before I wakened.”
Well, after he had gone we sent Emmie a nice lunch, and soon after, she
began to call the dog. But Tish had fed him and shut him in a closet
and once more she had to send her tray down untouched. She was in a
villainous temper by that time and the nurse came down about four P.M.
and said there was something queer about her. She just lay in bed and
stared hard at her. And when she had told her she was going to put on a
fresh uniform before Will got home, Emmie had called her something that
sounded like a hussy.
But if Emmie’s condition was worse, Will’s was distinctly better.
He ate a real meal that evening, and, instead of hurrying up to
her afterward, he sat for a little while in the sitting room. We
had brought along some blackberry cordial, and he sipped it with
appreciation.
“I was making some right good moonshine myself a while back,” he said.
“I bought a still, you know, and I gave the doctor some one night. He
turned his car over on his way back into town and broke his arm. But
the smell annoyed Emmie, so I had to give it up.”
Well, Miss Smith came in for a few minutes, too; she seemed glad to
relax for once. But pretty soon Emmie’s bell began to ring and she had
to go up. It was no time at all before she came running down the stairs
with a thermometer in her hand and a scared look on her face.
“You’d better come up at once, Mr. Hartford,” she said. “She’s got a
terrible fever.”
“How high is it?” asked Will, beginning to tremble.
“About as high as it can be,” said Miss Smith, looking worried. “I’ve
telephoned to the doctor, and he says to use a cold pack. But she won’t
have it.”
But as usual, our dear Tish rose to the emergency at once.
“Certainly she will have it,” she said. “You crack the ice, Will, and
you might mix some salt with it while you’re at it. There’s no use
doing it unless we do it right. A high fever is not to be fooled with.”
Well, I don’t know when I remember such a fuss as Emmie made over that
cold pack. She was strong, too, and it was all we could do to put her
between sheets wrung out of ice water and then pour the ice and salt
over her. She howled and screamed, but Tish worked calmly.
“You’re killing me!” she would yell. “I’m dying!”
“You will die if you don’t keep quiet,” Tish would say.
“But I’ll take cold; I’ll take pneumonia.”
“Not with a temperature like that,” Tish would assure her, and pour on
more ice and salt.
They did not stop until her temperature was down to ninety-five. She
would not speak to any of us by that time, but when it was all over,
Tish came over to the room Aggie and I occupied together and closed the
door.
“I fancy,” she said grimly, “that it will be some time before she holds
the thermometer against her hot-water bottle again.”
* * * * *
As Tish says, the Emmies of this world never fool the women, although
they always fool the men. But Emmie knew well enough that she had not
fooled us for a minute. And the way she hated us after the affair of
the cold pack was simply wicked. She would lie in bed and loathe the
very ground we walked on, and when she found it would take at least a
week to repair the car she had a convulsion and frothed at the mouth.
Tish was quite certain the froth was merely lather from a cake of soap,
but Will was almost out of his mind.
The strangest thing, however, was the way she had turned against Miss
Smith. Possibly the fact that Tish found a picture of her in Will’s
coat one day while she was repairing it in Emmie’s room had something
to do with it. But both Will and Miss Smith were as puzzled as could be
about it, and Miss Smith said it had been on her bureau when she went
out.
Will went right down on his knees beside Emmie’s bed and swore he had
always been true to her.
“There has never been any other woman in my life, Emmie,” he told her.
“I’ve never had any time for that sort of thing, and you know it.
Surely you can trust me!”
“I trust nobody,” said Emmie grimly. “If you haven’t the decency to
wait until I am gone, which at the best is a matter of weeks, I can but
lie here and await the end.”
But she couldn’t very well send the nurse away, for in ten years she
had had most of the nurses thereabouts, and none of them would come
back, and she knew it. She was very suspicious after that, however,
and the very next day, Aggie happening to dust baking soda instead of
powdered sugar over her cup custard--yes, she was eating a little by
that time; she had to, or starve--she accused Miss Smith of trying to
poison her.
Naturally, things were considerably strained from then on, although
both Will and the dog were showing marked improvement. Will would
come home to a clean house and a good dinner and smoke a couple of
cigarettes up the chimney afterward. Then he would get up heavily and
draw a long breath and say:
“Well, I suppose I’d better be getting on the job again,” and go slowly
up the stairs.
But long after he should have been in his bed, getting the rest he
needed, we could hear him reading aloud, on and on, until Emmie went to
sleep.
How long this might have continued I cannot say. But one morning we
missed the half of a coconut cake from the kitchen cupboard, and Tish
promptly went to Will about it.
“None are so blind as those who will not see,” she said to him. “But if
you think, Will Hartford, that a mouse ate that cake and then put the
pan in the garbage can, I don’t.”
“But I don’t think anything of the kind, Letitia,” he protested,
looking distressed. “Every now and then a tramp breaks into a house out
here and eats what he can find.”
Tish gave him a terrible stare, and then she used an expression I had
never before heard from her lips. “Some people are idiots,” she said,
“and some are just plain fools,” and with that she stalked out of the
room.
She called us together for a council of war, as she termed it, after he
had gone to the train.
“Two courses are open before us,” she said. “We can leave the poor
deluded imbecile to his fate, or we can take matters into our own
hands. If the former, we must go; if the latter, that nurse must get
out. I cannot be hampered.”
Well, after some argument we agreed to do whatever Tish suggested,
although Aggie stipulated that Emmie, being her cousin by marriage, was
to suffer no physical harm. Tish, on the other hand, demanded absolute
freedom and no criticism. And this being satisfactorily arranged it
remained only to get rid of Miss Smith.
As it happened, fate played into our hands that very morning.
The coconut cake had upset Emmie’s stomach, and the doctor sent some
medicine for her. But Tish met the boy at the door, and, having
instructed us to have the kettle boiling, was able to steam off the
label and place it on the bottle of ipecac swiftly and neatly. Miss
Smith gave her two doses before it began to act, but when it did it was
thorough.
Well, Emmie was about as sick as any human could be and live for the
next six hours. I suppose it was the first real sickness she had felt
in ten years, and the fuss she made was dreadful. There was no use
blaming a tramp for the coconut cake after it either. But what really
matters is that she made them bring Will out from town. And between
paroxysms she told him Miss Smith had poisoned her.
Miss Smith left that afternoon, but before she did she told Will that
Emmie was as well as he was, or even better, and that the doctor knew
it too. 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. “It is surprising, when you think of the things
folks might send her and don’t. Every now and then you read of somebody
getting a bomb, or poisoned candy.”
He looked at her, but she went on fixing Emmie’s tray in her usual
composed manner.
We had a day or two of peace after that. Tish brought Doctor Snodgrass,
her own physician, out from town. And after a short talk with her, he
put Emmie on a very light diet and went away again. As Tish had put a
padlock on the kitchen cupboard the light diet was all Emmie got, too.
She had a bowl of junket for breakfast, beef tea for lunch and in the
evening she had some milk toast, and if ever I’ve seen a woman suffer
she did. We did not run every time she rang her bell, either. She would
jingle it for half a dozen times, and for a feeble woman the way she
could fling it when nobody came was a marvel.
But, looking back, I can see that we underestimated her intelligence.
She had a good bit of time, by and large, to think things out, and she
was no fool, whatever else she might be. And I imagine it galled her,
too, to see Will filling out and looking more cheerful every day. He
was spending more time than ever downstairs and, instead of tiptoeing
into the room when he came home at night, he would walk in briskly and
say: “Well, how’s the old girl to-night?”
He still wandered across to the cemetery now and then, but we fancied
there was more of speculation than of grief in his face when he picked
the daisies off his lot. And one night, I remember, he came back and
said it was a curious thing that Emmie’s mother had lived to be eighty,
as frail as she had been, and that Emmie was like her in a lot of ways.
Tish eyed him.
“She certainly is,” she said. “I thought of that the night I found her
in the pantry.”
And then one night there was a yell and a crash upstairs, and when we
all ran up, with Will in the lead, we found Emmie stretched out on the
floor, and she said she was paralyzed from the waist down!
It took the four of us to get her back into bed. She gave Tish a glance
of triumph when she was finally installed and then grabbed Will’s hand
and began to groan.
“It’s the last straw,” she moaned. “Until now I have not been entirely
helpless, but this is too much. I am near the end, William.”
“My poor Emmie!” he wailed. “My poor afflicted girl!”
Things were not only no better, for all that we had done, but worse.
Well, Will carried on like a madman, of course. There were specialists
from town and a woman to massage her legs, but not a muscle would she
move. Except once, when Tish jabbed a pin into her and she jerked and
yelled like a lunatic. But she had us beaten, of course, for she had
worked it all out in her mind. If she had paralysis she didn’t have
to have anything else, and the very first thing she asked for was a
broiled beefsteak. After that she ate everything; she ate like a day
laborer.
Tish tried skimping on her tray, but if she got one egg instead of two
in the morning poor Will would come down looking troubled.
“We must build her up,” he would say. “She needs all the strength we
can give her, Letitia.”
And that was the situation when our poor Tish finally took matters into
her own hands, with results for which she has been so cruelly blamed.
* * * * *
I have now come to that series of mysterious events which led, with
tragic inevitability, to the crisis on the night of our departure. And
it may be well here to revert to the subject of spiritualism.
What with one thing and another Tish had apparently lost interest in
it, hers being a mind which concentrates on one idea at a time, and
having occupied itself almost entirely with Emmie since our arrival.
True, such reading aloud as she had been forced to do for Emmie while
Will had laryngitis had been on such subjects, dealing largely with
specters and apparitions. And both Aggie and I recalled later that
she had told Emmie that the nearness of the graveyard would make such
materialization comparatively simple.
But Emmie had shown more terror than interest in the subject, and
finally Will had insisted that Tish abandon it for lighter and more
cheerful material.
It had been seed sown in fruitful ground, however, as shall presently
appear.
To go back then: Will came home very dejected one night and said he
would have to go away for a business trip. Emmie was most disagreeable
about it.
“And what about me?” she demanded. “Are you going to leave me here
alone?”
“It’s the first time I’ve left you for five years, Emmie,” he told her.
“I’ll just have to go. And as for being alone, haven’t you got Letitia
here? And Lizzie and Aggie?”
Well, I must admit that that did not seem to cheer her any, and the
look she gave us was most unpleasant. But she had to let him go,
although her last words were not calculated to send him away happy.
“If anything happens to me while you are gone, Will,” she said, “you
know how I want things done. And my black silk dress is in the lower
bureau drawer.”
“I can get back in six hours if I’m needed, Emmie,” he said brokenly.
“A telegram or----”
“When I go I shall be snuffed out like a candle,” she told him in a
cold voice. And with that he went away, looking as though he was on
his way to the electric chair.
I met Tish on the stairs after she had seen him off. There was a
strange look on her face, I remembered later; but after she had settled
Emmie for the night she took up her knitting quietly enough. She always
contributes a number of knitted pairs of bedroom slippers to the Old
Ladies’ Home at Christmas.
Aggie and I retired early, taking Emmie’s bell with us at Tish’s
orders, so she could not disturb us during the night, and were soon
fast asleep.
But judge of our horror when, at two o’clock or thereabouts, we heard
a dreadful shriek from Emmie’s room, followed by a strange, rushing
sound. As soon as I could move I got out of bed and turned on the
lights; Aggie was reaching for her teeth, with her eyes fixed on the
door.
“I left that door open, Lizzie,” she said in an agonized whisper.
“Somebody’s closed it.”
Well, it certainly was closed, and when I tried it, it was locked and
the key was on the outside! And, to add to the dreadfulness of our
position, there was no further sound whatever; no whimpering from
Emmie’s room; no sound of Tish in short and sharp remonstrance. No
anything.
Never have we passed through such a half hour as followed. That both
our wonderful Tish and Emmie had fallen to the knife or other method
of some deadly assassin we never doubted. And when at the end of that
time we heard halting but inevitable footsteps slowly climbing the
staircase, both of us were certain that our hour had come. When they
stopped outside the door and an unseen hand fumbled with the key, Aggie
gave a low moan and made for the window, but she was stopped before it
was too late by the entrance into the room of Tish herself!
She was a curious dead-white color, and she came in limping and closed
the door.
“I’d like to borrow your tweezers, Lizzie,” she said, in a toneless
sort of voice. “I ran out when I heard Emmie scream, and I’ve got
something in my foot.”
“But Emmie!” we inquired in unison. “What has happened to her?”
It was a moment before she replied. Both Aggie and I remembered that
hesitation later and that there was a hard and determined look on her
face. But when she did reply, it was reassuring.
“She’s all right,” she said.
“But she screamed, Tish! She screamed horribly.”
“You’ve heard her scream before this,” she said coldly. “She says she
saw a ghost. That’s all.”
She went out again, and to her own room. She was very lame, we noticed,
but calm. Some time later she called to Aggie to bring her the arnica,
and Aggie did so. She reported that Tish had lost the strange pallor,
but that she had got a number of thorns in her feet and was removing
them.
“She’s very quiet, Lizzie,” Aggie said. “And I think she’s sprained
her ankle. You would think she had seen the ghost, to look at her, and
not Emmie.”
Well, I felt uneasy myself, especially as something had certainly
locked us in, and after a while I went across to Emmie’s room and
tapped lightly at the door. It was Tish herself who answered from the
other side.
“Get away from there, Lizzie,” she said sharply. “We are all right. I
shall stay with Emmie until she is calmer.”
The rest of the night was quiet enough. It was not until the next day
that certain things began to make us uneasy.
One of these was Emmie herself. However lightly Tish might treat the
matter, refusing to call a doctor and so on, it was evident that Emmie
had passed through a terrible experience.
She would not see anyone, even Aggie or myself, and she insisted on
keeping her door closed and locked. Once in a while we could hear
Tish reading to her, apparently to calm her. And she ate a little from
the trays Tish carried up. But never once did she raise her voice;
ordinarily when she wanted anything and no one answered her bell one
could hear her shouting, from the main road. But she was apparently
chastened beyond belief.
Our real anxiety, however, was Tish herself. She was in a curious
nervous state; a thing most unusual in her. She ate nothing at all. And
if a door slammed she would jump violently and turn quite pale.
Knowing her as we did, we could only believe that she, as well as
Emmie, had seen the apparition, and had possibly received a message of
some personal import. It was in a spirit of helpfulness, therefore, and
not of curiosity, that we decided to remain awake that night to give
her moral support if she required it.
And that very night we saw it ourselves.
Aggie was suffering from a bad attack of hay fever and had gone to the
window for air. Suddenly I heard her whisper, “Lizzie; cobe here! It’s
outside, od the walk!”
I ran to the window. And there below us, just leaving the kitchen
porch, was the apparition itself! It was a tall, thin, gray figure. And
as we watched, it moved along through the back garden and then, on
Aggie sneezing violently, apparently dissolved.
Although we waited for some time, it did not materialize again.
In view of Tish’s curious nervous condition, we did not mention it to
her. But we saw it for three nights in succession.
I must admit that it made us both very uneasy, especially in view of
Emmie’s continued strange state. If Tish had been her usual buoyant
self we would have gone to her, but she was oddly restless and uneasy,
and once or twice we even found her dozing in her chair--a thing
unprecedented with her.
But I kept a careful record of the appearance, and I quote from it here:
Monday. 12 midnight. Materialized human figure. Gray in color, thin in
outline. Ectoplasmic blanket around shoulders.
Tuesday. 1 A.M. Same figure, but with long rodlike structure--See
Crawford--across both shoulders. Figure bent, as though carrying
weight.
Wednesday. 12:30 A.M. Same figure, with misty projection around one
arm, simulating basket or pail.
This ends the record, for on Thursday Will Hartford unexpectedly came
home and a situation developed which I cannot yet recall without anger
and dismay.
* * * * *
We had not expected him for some time, but he let himself in with his
latchkey and came back to the kitchen where Aggie and I were fixing
Emmie’s tray. He looked thin and worn.
“How is she?” he asked, almost in a whisper. “Still----”
“She’s still alive, if that’s what you mean,” I said tartly. “Look at
this tray and judge for yourself.”
He was so relieved that he had to sit down and wipe his face, which was
covered with a clammy sweat.
“I just had to come back,” he said. “I didn’t even finish the business.
What do money and success matter if I haven’t her with me to share in
them?”
He got up, however, and picked up a large package he had brought in.
“I brought her some flowers,” he said. “I got to thinking while I was
away. Maybe I could have done a lot of things to make her happy, but
I’ve been too selfish to think of them. Well----”
Aggie watched him go out. She still had her hay fever, and standing at
the window for three nights had not improved it.
“What I dod’t udderstad, Lizzie,” she said, “is why there are so bady
healthy wobed in the world. The bed seeb to like theb feeble.”
And just then Tish, on her way downstairs for the tray, met Will face
to face. She never even spoke to him. She gave him one awful look, and
then, just as she was, she went out of the house. She did not come back
for the most terrible five hours of my life.
Now and then, in a nightmare, I hear Will carrying that box of flowers
up the stairs and opening the door which Tish had forgotten to lock.
And then I hear him give a groan and drop the box, and then come
staggering down again like a madman, shaking both his fists at us and
shouting at the top of his lungs.
“She’s gone!” he yelled. “You’ve lied to me! She’s dead! Oh, my poor
Emmie, and I left you to die alone!”
“Nonsense!” I shouted back at him. “Your poor Emmie’s all right. She’s
been eating enough for ten people right along!”
He stopped wailing and looked at me.
“Then where is she?” he demanded.
“She’s right up in her room in bed. You don’t see her frying herself
over this cookstove, do you?”
He caught me by the shoulder. “Have you
moved her?” he shouted. “Have you taken my precious girl out of the
room where she has lain helpless so long, and put her somewhere else?
Have you dared----”
“Oh, take your hands off me,” I said. “She’s up there all right. Maybe
she’s hiding behind the door to surprise you!”
Well, he ran up again, and we followed him. But he was right. Emmie’s
room was empty; her bed was neatly made up, and all the bottles on the
table beside it had been cleared away. We could only stand and stare,
while Will Hartford ran like a lunatic from room to room, peering into
the closets and behind the doors, and moaning all the time.
“Emmie,” he called over and over. “Emmie! It’s Will! It’s Will,
darling!”
I tried to calm him and tell him she was not hanging up in a cupboard
like an old coat, but he only turned on me savagely.
“Where’s that woman?” he cried. “Where’s Letitia Carberry? I didn’t
trust her from the start, and Emmie didn’t either. She has murdered my
poor girl. Murdered her and done away with her!”
What could we say, or do? We had to stand by and see him run down the
stairs; to hear him call the local police and accuse our poor Tish of
a heinous crime, and later on to remain helpless while the officers
searched the house and the cellar, and even dropped a searchlight down
into the well. And still no Tish. They would not even let us leave the
house to search for her, although I did manage to get Charlie Sands on
the telephone before they stopped me.
“Come at once,” I said. “We are in terrible trouble.”
“Naturally,” he said, without excitement. “Shall I bring bail money or
a doctor?”
But I could hear him whistle softly when I told him that Tish was
accused of a murder.
It was seven o’clock by that time and growing dark. Waiting by a
window, we watched for our poor Tish, but time went on and she did
not come. Eight o’clock. Nine. Ten. Never once did our loyalty waver,
but, on the other hand, what about the past four days? What about that
locked door into Emmie’s room and the trays that went up, while Tish
ate nothing at the table? What about that horrible scream and Tish’s
strange pallor afterward?
“Baybe Tish gave ger the wrog bedicide,” Aggie whispered to me, “ad she
died because of it, so Tish had to----”
But the policeman was watching us, and I motioned her to be silent.
The house was full of people by that time. Two or three doctors were
working with Will upstairs. And some neighbors had come in and were
digging a hole in the cellar. All they found was the still Will had
buried there, but the horrible sound of their spades about drove me
crazy. And still Tish did not come.
Charlie Sands arrived at eleven o’clock. They were bringing the still
up the cellar stairs just as he got there. And he seemed quite calm and
not at all worried.
“For some reason that reminds me,” he said, “that a little blackberry
cordial would not go amiss. I’ve had a long trip.”
And not until he had had a generous dose of this tonic did he make a
statement which set the whole house in a turmoil.
“By the way,” he said, “if you want Miss Carberry, she will be here in
a few moments. She would have arrived sooner, but one of the garage men
had taken her car out for a joy ride and she is waiting, to use her own
words, to give him a piece of her mind.”
* * * * *
Never shall I forget the scene when Tish arrived, and, walking quietly
into the hall, asked for a cup of tea, as she had had no supper. Will,
supported by two of the doctors, was waiting on the stairs, and he
tried to throw himself at her.
“Supper!” he screeched. “You--you murderess! What have you done with
her? Let me loose! I want to kill her,” he shouted.
But Tish paid no attention to him whatever. So far as she was concerned
he might not have been there.
“With a little cinnamon toast, too, Aggie,” she said. “I’m about
famished.”
“She’s brazen!” cried Will. “She’s insane! Where is Emmie, Tish
Carberry?”
She looked at him as if she saw him for the first time.
“Oh, Emmie!” she said. “Well, that’s a long story. Now, Aggie, do I get
tea, or do I not?”
Well, they were obliged to wait, for it was clear she would tell them
nothing until she was ready. They had to lock Will in a room until she
had had it, however, and, although the men who had been digging in the
cellar had stopped work, they still held onto their spades. They were
certain they would have to dig somewhere.
But at last she had finished, and they brought Will down again and
confronted her with him again. She gave him a long, hard look, and
then she smiled.
“You’re a fool, Will Hartford,” she said calmly, “and your poor
helpless Emmie knows it. That’s why she’s helpless.”
“I know a murderess when I see one,” said Will.
“As to her being helpless,” Tish went on inexorably, “let me tell you
that, in spite of her total paralysis, she placed herself where you
will find her, and has since remained there of her own free will.”
“That’s a lie at the start,” said Will. “She can’t walk a step, and
you know it. Officers, if that woman gets out of this house she will
attempt to escape. It’s a ruse on her part. She’s got a car at the
door.”
Tish sighed.
“Well, I’ve done my best for you, Will,” she told him. “Personally, I
don’t care whether Emmie is found or not. If I have a preference, it is
for the latter. But I’ll take you to her and the rest is up to you.”
I don’t believe any of them believed her. Will Hartford, indeed,
demanded handcuffs for her, but she only sat down quietly and refused
to stir if they used them. And when someone said she ought to be in
jail on general principles, she merely replied placidly that jails
were no novelty to her.
In the end they agreed to let her go free, and she rose briskly and
started out the kitchen door. It was a strange procession, indeed, and
a silent one, for that had been Tish’s condition.
“One unnecessary sound,” she said, “and I stop. Later on I shall place
you all at a point of observation, and I shall ask for silence.”
In the hall she had picked up a parcel she had brought in with her, and
she took it with her. The police were suspicious of it, but on their
threatening to open it she at once turned back, and they were compelled
to let it alone.
As I look back I can still see that strange group--Will broken and
supported by a doctor on each side, three policemen, six neighbors,
mostly armed with spades, and ourselves. And in the lead our dear Tish,
with no evidence of guilt about her, but rather as one who has done a
good and worthy deed. She moved swiftly, as though she knew the way
well, up through the pasture behind the house and through a grove of
trees, until at the other side we could dimly discern a small cabin,
and a light shining through the window.
Here Tish stopped and addressed us.
“We have come a half mile,” she said. “Mrs. Hartford may tell you that
she was brought here while unconscious, but she came here on two
perfectly healthy legs. I know, because I followed her. And she came
rapidly,” she added, with what I felt was a certain significance. “Now
I have one request to make. You will stay here until I have reached the
cabin; then you will come to the window as silently as possible.”
They let her go, and we did as she had requested. But never, so long as
I live, shall I forget the sight that greeted us as we stared through
that window.
The cabin was bare, save for a folding cot bed, a candle on a shelf, a
box for a chair and an old cooking stove with some utensils on it. And
lying on the cot, in a dressing gown over her nightdress, was Will’s
Emmie. She was scowling frightfully, and when Tish opened the door she
nearly jumped down her throat.
“Do you know what time it is?” she demanded furiously. “And that I’ve
had nothing to eat since breakfast?”
“I left you plenty for all day,” Tish told her. “And you know you can
get plenty more if you decide to come home.”
“I’m not walking back, if that’s what you mean,” Emmie snapped.
“Very well, but you are walking to this cookstove if you want any
supper,” Tish said, and sat down on the box. “If you could run a half
mile you can walk ten feet.”
I think Will would have broken away then and there, but Charlie Sands
took hold of him. And the next minute Emmie got off that cot and walked
across the room. She was in a frightful humor, for she slapped a frying
pan onto the stove, opened the package, and said: “Bacon again! I hope
I never see another pig!” and began to cook a meal for herself in a
most able-bodied but infuriated manner.
And she ate bread and butter over the stove while the meat was frying!
Tish only spoke once while this was going on.
“It’s a pity poor Will can’t see you now,” she said.
“If he was here I wouldn’t be having to do this,” she snapped.
“No,” said Tish. “The poor fool must like to be deceived. It’s my
experience that the weaker a man is the more he likes to have something
helpless around him. It makes him feel strong and protective.”
Well, Will made a noise at that, and Emmie suddenly threw up her head
and listened.
“Who’s out there?” she said in a dreadful voice.
“Only Will and two or three policemen and a few neighbors,” Tish told
her calmly. “They’re all glad you are well again, and can take your
place in the----”
But at that Emmie simply leaped at her, and the next moment Will
Hartford was inside, pulling her off our poor Tish and holding her so
her blows would do no damage. And then he put his arms around her and
glared at Tish as if she had been the one to blame.
“Leave!” he said. “Begone! To what brutality you have submitted my poor
wife I have yet to learn. But the law is not through. Not yet. Nor am
I.”
But Tish only stared at him with a faint and sardonic smile.
“Oh, yes, you are,” she told him. “You’re through. You’re as through as
you can be. I tried to save you, but you wouldn’t be saved.”
And with that didn’t Emmie suddenly cry out, “Oh, my poor legs! There’s
no feeling in them! It’s come again.”
And she sagged in his arms, just exactly as paralyzed as ever.
* * * * *
No, as Tish has often said, there is no moral to this tale. Emmie is
still paralyzed, but people get what they want in this world, and if
they want a helpless woman she’s about the easiest thing there is to
obtain.
But it has been necessary to relate it as accurately as possible,
because of the stories that have been going round.
Tish certainly never dreamed that Emmie would leave the house. All she
meant to do by playing ghost was to prove that she was not paralyzed at
all, but had two perfectly good legs.
But Emmie’s legs were even better than Tish had expected. She says, and
I have never known her to exaggerate, that Emmie never went down the
stairs at all, but leaped over the stair rail. And when Tish tried to
catch her, because she was in her nightgown and the night was cool, the
silly fool simply kept on running.
It was daylight the next morning when Tish finally located her in the
cabin. But the chances are that Emmie saw her coming, for when Tish
went in she was lying on the floor with her eyes closed, and she only
opened them when Tish shook her.
Then she stared around feebly and said, “Where am I? And how did I get
here?”
She would not walk back, and Tish knew it was hopeless from that minute.
As I have said, there is no moral whatever to this story. The nearest I
can come to it is that couplet Tish secured by automatic writing the
other day:
“_There swims no goose so gray but soon or late
She finds some honest gander for her mate._”
And even there, as dear Tish so aptly remarks, there is a question. For
how honest is a man who wants those about him to be weak so he can feel
strong?