Chapter 7

“At first, of course,” she said, “I thought you were white slavers. But I’ve got it now. The other game is different. Oh, I may come from a small town, but I’m not unsophisticated. You people didn’t send my father those black hand letters he’s been getting lately, I suppose?”

“Tish!” I called sharply.

But Tish had stopped and was listening intently. Suddenly she said:

“Run!”

There was a sort of pounding noise somewhere behind, and Aggie screeched that it was the Knowleses’ bull loose on the road. I thought it quite likely, and as we had once had a very unpleasant time with it, spending the entire night in the Knowleses’ pig pen, with the animal putting his horns through the chinks every now and then, I dropped the suitcase and ran. Myrtle ran too, and we reached the farmhouse in safety.

It was then that we realized that the sound was the pursuing car, bumping along slowly on four flat tires. Tish shut and bolted the door, and as the windows were closed with wooden frames, nailed on, we were then in darkness. We could hear the runabout, however, thudding slowly up the drive, and the voices of Mr. Culver and the policeman as they tried the door and the window shutters.

Tish stood just inside the door, and Myrtle was just beside me. Aggie had collapsed on a hall chair. I have, I think, neglected to say that the farmhouse was furnished. Tish’s mother used to go out there every summer, and she was a great woman for being comfortable.

At last Mr. Culver came to the front door and spoke through it.

“Hello, inside there!” he called, in a furious voice. As no one replied, he then banged at the door, and from the sound I fancy the policeman was hammering also, with his mace.

“Open, in the name of the law!” bellowed the policeman.

“Stop that racket,” Tish replied sternly. “Or I shall fire.”

Of course she had no weapon, but they did not know this. We could hear Mr. Culver telling the policeman to keep back, as he knew us, and we had any other set of desperadoes he had ever heard of beaten for recklessness with a gun.

There was a moment’s silence, during which I heard Aggie’s knitting needles going furiously. She learned to knit by touch once when she had iritis and was obliged to finish a slumber robe in time for Tish’s birthday. So the darkness did not trouble her, and I knew she was knitting to compose herself.

Tish then stood inside the door, and delivered through it one of the most inspiring patriotic speeches I have ever heard. She spoke of our long tolerance, while the world waited. Then of the decision, and the call to arms. She said that the sons of the Nation were rising that day in their might.

“But,” she finished, “there are some among us who would shirk, would avoid the high and lofty duty. There are some who would profane the name of love, and hide behind it to save their own cowardly skins. To these ignoble ones there is but one course left open. Go. Put your name on the roster of your country as a free man, unmarried and without impediments of any sort. Then return and these doors will fly open before the magic of a blue card.”

It was at that time, we learned later, that the policeman, who was but a rough and untutored type, decided that Tish was insane—how often, alas, is genius thus mistaken!—and started off for the Knowles farm to bring help. Mr. Culver made no reply to Tish’s speech, and we learned later had gone away in the midst of it. Later on he was reported by Aggie, who looked out from an upper window, to be sitting under the chestnut tree where he had once rescued Tish’s black alpaca skirt, sulking and watching.

Tish then went up and spoke to him from the window.

“See here,” she said angrily, “do you think that I did not mean what I said through that door?”

He had the audacity to yawn.

“I didn’t hear all of it,” he said. “But judging from what I know of you, I daresay you meant it. Would you mind tossing me a tin cup or something to drink out of?”

“You are not going back to town to register, then?”

“It’s early,” he replied, coolly. “If you mean do I intend to walk back, I do not. I shall wait for the Sheriff and the posse.”

It was then that Tish saw the policeman crossing a field toward the Knowles farm and she tried to reason with the young man. But he dropped his pretence of indifference, and would not even listen to her.

“I’ve only one thing to say,” he said, fiercely. “You be careful of that young lady. As to whether I register or not, that’s my business and has nothing to do with the case. When you open that door and send her out, with four good tires to take the place of the ones you ruined, I’ll talk to you, and not before.”

He then got up and walked away, and Tish came downstairs and lighted a candle with hands that shook with rage. We had heard the entire conversation, and in the candlelight I could see that Aggie was as white as wax.

Well, the situation was really desperate, but Tish’s face forbade questions. Aggie ventured to observe that perhaps it would be better to unlock the door and release the girl, but Tish only gave her a ferocious glance.

“I am doing my duty,” she said, firmly. “I have done nothing for which the law can punish me. If a young lady comes willingly into my car for a ride, as you did”—she turned sharply to Myrtle—“and if a young fool chooses to sit in my front yard instead of registering to serve his country, it is not my fault. As a matter of fact, I can probably have him arrested for trespass.”

As I have said, the farmhouse is still furnished with Tish’s mother’s things. She was a Biggs, and all the things the Biggses had not wanted for sixty years were in the house. So at least we had chairs to sit on, and if we had only had water, for we were all thirsty from excitement and dust, we could have been fairly comfortable, although Myrtle complained bitterly of thirst.

“And I want to wash,” she said fretfully. “If I could wash I’d change my blouse and look like something.”

“For whom?” Tish demanded. “For that slacker outside?”

Suddenly Myrtle laughed. She had been in tears for so long that it surprised us. We all stared at her, but she seemed to get worse and worse.

“She’s hysterical, poor child,” Aggie said, feeling for her smelling salts. “I don’t know that I blame her, Tish. No one knows better than I do what it is to expect to be married, and then find the divine hand of Providence intervening.”

But Myrtle suddenly walked over to Aggie and, stooping, kissed her on the top of her right ear.

“You dear thing!” she said. “I still don’t get all the idea, but I don’t much care if I don’t. I haven’t had so much excitement since I ran away from boarding school.”

She then straightened and looked at Tish. It was clear that her feeling for dear Tish was still vague, but was rather more of respect than of love.

“As for the—the young man outside,” she said, “I seem to gather that he hasn’t registered, and that I am not to marry him until he has. Very well. I hadn’t thought about it before, but that speech of yours—suppose you tell him that I won’t marry him until he has a—a magic blue card. I should like to see his face.”

But Tish is a woman of delicacy, and she suggested that Myrtle do it herself, from an upper window. I went up with her, and we found Mr. Culver again under the tree. The conversation ran like this:

MYRTLE, (looking very pretty indeed but very firm): Look here, I—I’ve decided not to marry you.

MR. CULVER (rousing suddenly and staring up at her): I beg your pardon!

MYRTLE: I know now that I was making a terrible mistake. No matter how much I care for you, I cannot marry a slacker.

MR. C. (furiously angry and glaring at her): You know better than that!

MYRTLE: Not at all. Can you deny that you haven’t registered yet?

MR. C.: What’s that got to do with it? I daresay I’m losing my mind. It wouldn’t be much wonder if I have. When I think of the way I’ve suffered lately—look at me!

MYRTLE (in a somewhat softened voice): Have you really suffered?

MR. C.: I? Good Lord, Myrtle—why, I haven’t slept for weeks. I——

But here he stopped, with his eyes fixed on the roof overhead.

“Watch out!” he yelled. “Get back. Myrtle, she’ll fall on you.”

“Not at all,” said Tish’s calm voice from overhead. There was a rasping sound, and then a long wire fell past the window. “Now,” she called triumphantly, “let your policeman telephone for the Sheriff and a posse! That was a party wire, and that farmhouse over there is on it. There isn’t another telephone for ten miles.”

Well, I looked around for Myrtle, and she was on the guest room bed, face down.

“Oh,” she groaned, “I wouldn’t have missed it for a trip to Europe. And his face! Miss Lizzie, did you see his face?” She then got up suddenly and put her arms around me. “I’m simply madly happy, Miss Lizzie,” she said. “I have to kiss somebody, and since he—may I kiss you?”

Well, of course I allowed her to, but I was surprised. It was not natural, somehow.

Myrtle came down soon after and said that Mr. Culver was bringing some water from the well, and would he be allowed to come in with it? But Tish was firm on this point. She gave her consent, however, to his leaving the pail on the porch and then retiring to the chestnut tree. He did so, whistling to signify that he was at a safe distance, and I then carried it in.

“I say,” he called to me when he saw me, “this situation is getting on my nerves. I carried off that policeman, for one thing. He was on duty.”

“You needn’t stay here.”

“I daresay not,” he replied rather bitterly. “But what I want to ask is this: Won’t it be deucedly unpleasant for you three, when I report that you deliberately put my car out of commission so I could not get back by nine o’clock to register? Of course,” he went on, “a box of tacks may have spilled itself on the road, but I never heard of a barbed wire fence trying to crawl across a road and getting run over, like a snake.”

I reported this to Tish, and I saw that she was uneasy, although she merely remarked that he still had two legs, and that she had not asked him to follow us. All she had set out to do was to see that he didn’t get married before he registered, and she was doing that to the best of her ability. The rest was his affair.

It was six o’clock by that time, and Tish had had nothing to eat since five in the morning, and none of us had had any luncheon. Although a woman who thinks little or nothing of food, I found her, shortly afterwards, in the pantry, looking into jars. There was nothing, however, except some salt, a little baking powder and a package of dried sage. But Aggie, going to an attic window to look for the policeman, discovered about a quart of flour in a barrel up there, and scraping it out, brought it down.

“I might bake some biscuits, Tish,” she suggested. “I feel that I’ll have to have some nourishment. I’m so weak that my knees shake.”

“Myrtle,” Tish said abruptly, with that quick decision so characteristic of her, “you might tell that worthless young man of yours to look in the granary. Sometimes the Knowleses’ hens come over here, and I daresay they’ve eaten enough off the place to pay for the eggs.”

But Myrtle, after a conference from the window, reported that Mr. Culver had said he would get the eggs, if there were any, on condition that he get his pro rata share of them.

“If there are ten eggs,” she said, “he wants two. And if there is an odd number he claims the odd one.”

This irritated Tish, but at last she grudgingly consented. In a short time, therefore, Mr. Culver knocked at the kitchen door.

“I am leaving,” he said, “eleven eggs, eight of undoubted respectability, two questionable, and one that I should advise opening into a saucer first. Also some corn meal from the granary. And if you will set out a pail and come after me if I am wounded, I shall go after a cow that I see in yon sylvan vale.”

His voice was strangely cheerful, but, indeed, the prospect of food had cheered us all, although I could see that Tish was growing more and more anxious, as time went on and no policeman appeared in the Knowleses’ machine. However, we worked busily. Myrtle, building a fire and setting the table with the Biggses’ dishes, and Aggie making biscuits, without shortening, while Tish stirred the corn meal mush.

“Many a soldier in the trenches,” she said, “would be grateful for such a frugal meal. When one reflects that the total cost of mush and milk is but a trifle——”

Here, however, we were interrupted by Mr. Culver outside. He spoke in gasps and we heard the pail clatter to the porch floor.

“I regretfully report——” he said, through the keyhole. “No milk. Wrong sex. Sorry.”

Ten of the eggs proving good, we placed two of them on a plate with three biscuits and a bowl of mush, and Tish carried it out, placing it on the floor of the porch, much as she would have set it out for the dog.

“Here,” she called. “And when you have finished you might go after that accomplice of yours. He’s probably asleep somewhere.”

“Dear lady,” said Mr. Culver, “I would, but I dare not. A fiery creature, breathing fury from its nostrils, is abroad and——”

But Tish came in and slammed the door.

It was after supper that we missed Tish. She was nowhere in the house, and the kitchen door, which had been bolted, was unlocked. Aggie wrung her hands, but Myrtle was quite calm.

“I shouldn’t worry about her,” she said. “She’s about as well able to take care of herself as any woman I ever saw.”

It was now quite dark, and our fears increased. But soon afterwards Tish came in. She went to the stove and pouring out a cup of hot water, drank it in silence. Then she said:

“I’ve been to the Knowleses’. The dratted idiots are all away, probably to the schoolhouse, registering. The car’s gone, and the house is closed.”

“And the policeman?” I asked.

“I didn’t see him,” said Tish. But she did not look at me. She fell to pacing up and down the kitchen, deep in thought.

“What time is it, Lizzie?” she asked.

“Almost eight.”

Here Tish gave what in another woman would have been a groan.

“It’s raining,” she observed, and fell to pacing again. At last she told me to follow her outside, and I went, feeling that she had at last made a decision. Her attitude throughout her period of cogitation had been not unlike that of Napoleon before Waterloo. There were the same bent head and clasped hands, the same melancholy mixed with determination.

Mr. Culver was sitting under his tree, with his coat collar turned up around his neck. Tish stopped and surveyed him with gentle dignity.

“You may enter the house,” she said. “The country will gain nothing by your having pneumonia, although personally I am indifferent. And, after thinking over your case, I have come to this decision.” She paused, as for oratorical effect. “I shall deliver you to your registration precinct by nine o’clock,” she said impressively, “and immediately after that, I shall see that you two are married. I am not young,” she went on, “and perhaps I do not think enough of sentiment. But it shall never be said of me that I parted two loving hearts, one of which may, before the snow flies, be still and pulseless in a foreign grave.”

She then, still with that new air of melancholy majesty, led me to the barn, leaving him staring.

It was there, by means of a key hanging round her neck, that Letitia Carberry, great hearted woman and patriot that she is, bared her inner heart to me. In the barn was a large and handsome ambulance, with large red crosses on side and top, which she had offered to the government if she might drive it herself. But the government which she was even then so heroically serving had refused her permission, and Tish had buried her disappointment in the bucolic solitude of her farm.

Such, in brief, was Tish’s tragic secret.

“I shall take it in to the city tonight, Lizzie,” she said heavily. “And tomorrow I shall present it to the Red Cross. Some other hand than mine will steer it through shot and shell, and ultimately into Berlin. It has everything. There’s a soup compartment and—well,” she finished, “it is doing its work even tonight. Get in.”

We found Aggie on the porch, having with her usual delicacy of feeling left the lovers alone inside. When she saw the Ambulance, however, she fell to sneezing violently, crying out between paroxysms that if Tish was going to the war, she was also. But Tish hushed her sternly.

There was a good engine in the Ambulance. Tish said she had ordered a fast one, because it was often necessary to run between shells, as it were. She then shoved on the gas as far as it would go, and we were off. After a time, finding it impossible to sit on the folding seats inside, we all sat on the floor, and I believe Mr. Culver held Myrtle’s hand all of the way.

He said little, beyond observing once that he felt a trifle queer about leaving the policeman, who had been on duty when he picked him up at the Court House, and who was now lost some forty-five miles from home, in a strange land.

I am glad, in this public manner, to correct the report that on the evening of June fifth a German Zeppelin made a raid over our country, and that the wounded were hurried to the city in a Red Cross Ambulance, traveling at break-neck speed.

At nine o’clock Mr. Culver was registered at Engine House number eleven, fourteenth ward, third precinct.

At nine-fifteen Mr. Culver and Myrtle were married at the same address by Mr. Ostermaier, standing in front of the fire truck.

But this should be related in detail. So bitter was Charlie Sands, so uneasy about the license, and so on, that I feel in fairness to Tish that I should relate exactly what happened.

At ten o’clock that night everything was over, and we had gathered in Tish’s apartment while Hannah broiled a steak, for Tish felt that the occasion permitted a certain extravagance, when Charlie Sands came in. Behind him was a dishevelled young man, with wild eyes and a suitcase. Charlie Sands stood and glared at us.

“Well!” he said. And then: “Where’s the young lady?”

“What young lady?” asked Tish, coldly.

The young man stepped forward, with his fists clenched.

“Mine!” he bellowed. “Mine! Don’t deny it. I recognize you. I saw you—the lot of you. I saw you drag her into a car and kidnap her. I saw that ass Culver and a policeman chasing you in another car. Oh, I know you, all right. Didn’t I pay twenty-two dollars for a taxicab that got three punctures all at once thirty miles from the city? _Now where is she?_”

“Just a moment,” said Tish’s nephew, holding him back by an arm across his chest. “Just remember that whatever my aunt has done was done with the best intentions.”

“D—— her intentions! I want Myrtle.”

The dreadful truth must have come to Tish at that moment, as it did to the rest of us. I know that she turned pale. But she rose and pointed magnificently to the door.

“Leave my apartment,” she said majestically. And to Charlie Sands: “Take that madman away and lock him up. Then, if you have anything to say to me, come back alone.”

“Not a step,” said the young man. “Where’s my marriage license? Where’s——”

But Charlie Sands pushed him out into the hallway and closed the door on him. Then, with folded arms he surveyed us.

“That’s right!” he said. “Knit! I believe most pirates knit on off days. Now, Aunt Letitia, I want the whole story.”

“Story?”

“About the license. He says the girl had the license.”

“What license?”

“Don’t evade!” he said sternly. “Where were you this afternoon?”

“If you want the truth,” said Tish, “although it’s none of your business, Charlie Sands, and you can unfold your arms, because the pose has no effect on me,—I was out rounding up a young man who had not registered. I got him and brought him in to my precinct at five minutes to nine.”

“And that’s the truth?”

“Go and ask Mr. Ostermaier,” said Tish, in a bored tone.

“But this boy outside——”

“Look here,” Tish said suddenly, “go and ask that noisy young idiot for his blue card. It’s my belief he hasn’t registered and more than likely he’s been making all this fuss so he’ll have an excuse if he’s found out. How do we know,” she went on, gaining force with each word, “that there _is_ a Myrtle?”

“By George!” said Charlie Sands, and disappeared.

It was then, for the first time in her valiant life, that I saw our Tish weaken.

“Lizzie!” she groaned, leaning back in her chair. “That Culver was married with another man’s name on the license. What’s more, I married him to that flibbertygibbet who had just jilted him. What have I done? Oh, what have I done?”

“They both seemed happy, Tish,” I tried to soothe her. But she refused all consolation, and merely called Hannah and asked for some blackberry cordial. She drank fully half a tumbler full and she recovered her poise by the time Charlie Sands stuck his head through the door again.

“You’re right, most shrewd of aunts,” he said. “He’s been playing me for a sucker all right. Not a blue card on him! And he belongs out of town, so it’s too late.”

“It’s a jail matter,” said Tish, knitting calmly, although we afterwards discovered that she had put a heel on the wristlet she was making. “You’d better get his name, and I’ll notify the sheriff of his county in the morning.”

Charlie Sands came over to her and stood looking down at her.

“Aunt Tish,” he said. “I believe you. I believe you firmly. I shall not even ask about a young man named Culver, who went to get our marriage license list at the Court House this afternoon and has not been seen since. But I want to bring a small matter to your attention. That policeman had not registered.”

He then turned and went toward the door.

“But I did, dear Aunt Letitia,” he said and was gone.

* * * * *

Tish came to see me the next afternoon, bringing the paper, which contained a glowing account of her gift to the local Red Cross of a fine ambulance. An editorial comment spoke of her public spirit, which for so many years had made her a conspicuous figure in all civic work.

“The city,” it finished, “can do with many like our Miss ‘Tish’ Carberry.”

But Tish showed no exultation. She sat in a rocking chair and rocked slowly.

“Read the next editorial, Lizzie,” she said, in a low voice.

I have it before me now, cut out rather raggedly, for I confess I was far from calm when I did it.

* * * * *

“A SHAMEFUL INCIDENT.

“Perhaps nothing has so exposed this city to criticism as the conduct of Officer Flinn, as shown in a news item in our columns exclusively. Officer Flinn has been five years on the police force of this city. He has until now borne an excellent record. But he did not register yesterday, and on limping into the Central Station this morning told a story manifestly intended to indicate temporary insanity and thus still further disqualify him for the service of his country. His statement of seeing three elderly women kidnap a young girl from in front of the Court House, his further statement of following the kidnappers far into the country, with a young man he cannot now produce, is sufficiently outrageous.

“But, not satisfied with this, the inventive ex-officer went further and added a night in a pigpen, constantly threatened by a savage bull, and a journey of forty-five miles on foot when, early this morning, the animal retired for a belated sleep!

“Representatives of this paper, investigating this curious situation, found the farmhouse which Officer Flinn described as being the den of the kidnappers and which he stated he had left in a state of siege, the bandits and their victim within and the young man who had accompanied the officer, without. Needless to say, nothing bore out his story. A young married couple, named Culver, who are spending their honeymoon there, knew nothing of the circumstances, although stating that they believed that a neighboring family possessed a belligerent bull.