Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions

M >> Mary Roberts Rinehart >> Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions

[Illustration: "The outside edge, by George!" said Charlie Sands. "The
old sport!"]





TISH

The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions

By MARY ROBERTS RINEHART


_With Illustrations_
_by May Wilson Preston_



1916




CONTENTS


MIND OVER MOTOR

LIKE A WOLF ON THE FOLD

THE SIMPLE LIFERS

TISH'S SPY

MY COUNTRY TISH OF THEE--




ILLUSTRATIONS


"The outside edge, by George!" said Charlie Sands. "The old sport!"

Without cutting down her speed, bumped home the winner

The real meaning of what was occurring did not penetrate to any of us

It ended with Tish stalking off into the woods with the rabbit in one
hand and the knife in the other

As fast as she wet a bit of lawn, we followed with the pails

"Get the canoe and follow. I'm heading for Island Eleven"

"It's well enough for you, Tish Carberry, to talk about gripping a horse
with your knees"

"The older I get, Aggie Pilkington, the more I realize that to take you
anywhere means ruin"

"It would be just like the woman to refuse to come any farther and spoil
everything"






MIND OVER MOTOR

HOW TISH BROKE THE LAW AND SOME RECORDS

I


So many unkind things have been said of the affair at Morris Valley
that I think it best to publish a straightforward account of everything.
The ill nature of the cartoon, for instance, which showed Tish in a pair
of khaki trousers on her back under a racing-car was quite uncalled
for. Tish did not wear the khaki trousers; she merely took them along
in case of emergency. Nor was it true that Tish took Aggie along as
a mechanician and brutally pushed her off the car because she was not
pumping enough oil. The fact was that Aggie sneezed on a curve and fell
out of the car, and would no doubt have been killed had she not been
thrown into a pile of sand.

It was in early September that Eliza Bailey, my cousin, decided to go
to London, ostensibly for a rest, but really to get some cretonne at
Liberty's. Eliza wrote me at Lake Penzance asking me to go to Morris
Valley and look after Bettina.

I must confess that I was eager to do it. We three were very comfortable
at Mat Cottage, "Mat" being the name Charlie Sands, Tish's nephew, had
given it, being the initials of "Middle-Aged Trio." Not that I regard
the late forties as middle-aged. But Tish, of course, is fifty. Charlie
Sands, who is on a newspaper, calls us either the "M.A.T." or the
"B.A.'s," for "Beloved Aunts," although Aggie and I are not related
to him.

Bettina's mother's note:--

Not that she will allow you to do it, or because she isn't entirely
able to take care of herself; but because the people here are a talky
lot. Bettina will probably look after you. She has come from college
with a feeling that I am old and decrepit and must be cared for. She
maddens me with pillows and cups of tea and woolen shawls. She thinks
Morris Valley selfish and idle, and is disappointed in the church,
preferring her Presbyterianism pure. She is desirous now of learning
how to cook. If you decide to come I'll be grateful if you can keep
her out of the kitchen.

Devotedly, ELIZA.

P.S. If you can keep Bettina from getting married while I'm away
I'll be very glad. She believes a woman should marry and rear a
large family!

E.


We were sitting on the porch of the cottage at Lake Penzance when I
received the letter, and I read it aloud. "Humph!" said Tish, putting
down the stocking she was knitting and looking over her spectacles at
me--"Likes her Presbyterianism pure and believes in a large family! How
old is she? Forty?"

"Eighteen or twenty," I replied, looking at the letter. "I'm not anxious
to go. She'll probably find me frivolous."

Tish put on her spectacles and took the letter. "I think it's your duty,
Lizzie," she said when she'd read it through. "But that young woman
needs handling. We'd better all go. We can motor over in half a day."

That was how it happened that Bettina Bailey, sitting on Eliza Bailey's
front piazza, decked out in chintz cushions,--the piazza, of course,--saw
a dusty machine come up the drive and stop with a flourish at the steps.
And from it alight, not one chaperon, but three.

After her first gasp Bettina was game. She was a pretty girl in a white
dress and bore no traces in her face of any stern religious proclivities.

"I didn't know--" she said, staring from one to the other of us. "Mother
said--that is--won't you go right upstairs and have some tea and lie
down?" She had hardly taken her eyes from Tish, who had lifted the
engine hood and was poking at the carbureter with a hairpin.

"No, thanks," said Tish briskly. "I'll just go around to the garage and
oil up while I'm dirty. I've got a short circuit somewhere. Aggie, you
and Lizzie get the trunk off."

Bettina stood by while we unbuckled and lifted down our traveling trunk.
She did not speak a word, beyond asking if we wouldn't wait until the
gardener came. On Tish's saying she had no time to wait, because she
wanted to put kerosene in the cylinders before the engine cooled,
Bettina lapsed into silence and stood by watching us.

Bettina took us upstairs. She had put Drummond's "Natural Law in the
Spiritual World" on my table and a couch was ready with pillows and a
knitted slumber robe. Very gently she helped us out of our veils and
dusters and closed the windows for fear of drafts.

"Dear mother is so reckless of drafts," she remarked. "Are you sure you
won't have tea?"

"We had some blackberry cordial with us," Aggie said, "and we all had a
little on the way. We had to change a tire and it made us thirsty."

"Change a tire!"

Aggie had taken off her bonnet and was pinning on the small lace cap she
wears, away from home, to hide where her hair is growing thin. In her
cap Aggie is a sweet-faced woman of almost fifty, rather ethereal. She
pinned on her cap and pulled her crimps down over her forehead.

"Yes," she observed. "A bridge went down with us and one of the nails
spoiled a new tire. I told Miss Carberry the bridge was unsafe, but she
thought, by taking it very fast--"

Bettina went over to Aggie and clutched her arm. "Do you mean to say,"
she quavered, "that you three women went through a bridge--"

"It was a small bridge," I put in, to relieve her mind; "and only a foot
or two of water below. If only the man had not been so disagreeable--"

"Oh," she said, relieved, "you had a man with you!"

"We never take a man with us," Aggie said with dignity. "This one was
fishing under the bridge and he was most ungentlemanly. Quite refused
to help, and tried to get the license number so he could sue us."

"Sue you!"

"He claimed his arm was broken, but I distinctly saw him move it."
Aggie, having adjusted her cap, was looking at it in the mirror. "But
dear Tish thinks of everything. She had taken off the license plates."

Bettina had gone really pale. She seemed at a loss, and impatient at
herself for being so. "You--you won't have tea?" she asked.

"No, thank you."

"Would you--perhaps you would prefer whiskey and soda."

Aggie turned on her a reproachful eye. "My dear girl," she said, "with
the exception of a little home-made wine used medicinally we drink
nothing. I am the secretary of the Woman's Prohibition Party."

Bettina left us shortly after that to arrange for putting up Letitia
and Aggie. She gave them her mother's room, and whatever impulse she
may have had to put the Presbyterian Psalter by the bed, she restrained
it. By midnight Drummond's "Natural Law" had disappeared from my table
and a novel had taken its place. But Bettina had not lost her air of
bewilderment.

That first evening was very quiet. A young man in white flannels called,
and he and Letitia spent a delightful evening on the porch talking
spark-plugs and carbureters. Bettina sat in a corner and looked at the
moon. Spoken to, she replied in monosyllables in a carefully sweet tone.
The young man's name was Jasper McCutcheon.

It developed that Jasper owned an old racing-car which he kept in the
Bailey garage, and he and Tish went out to look it over. They very
politely asked us all to go along, but Bettina refusing, Aggie and I sat
with her and looked at the moon.

Aggie in her capacity as chaperon, or as one of an association of
chaperons, used the opportunity to examine Bettina on the subject of
Jasper.

"He seems a nice boy," she remarked. Aggie's idea of a nice boy is one
who in summer wears fresh flannels outside, in winter less conspicuously.
"Does he live near?"

"Next door," sweetly but coolly.

"He is very good-looking."

"Ears spoil him--too large."

"Does he come around--er--often?"

"Only two or three times a day. On Sunday, of course, we see more of
him."

Aggie looked at me in the moonlight. Clearly the young man from the next
door needed watching. It was well we had come.

"I suppose you like the same things?" she suggested. "Similar tastes
and--er--all that?"

Bettina stretched her arms over her head and yawned.

"Not so you could notice it," she said coolly. "I can't thick of
anything we agree on. He is an Episcopalian; I'm a Presbyterian. He
approves of suffrage for women; I do not. He is a Republican; I'm a
Progressive. He disapproves of large families; I approve of them, if
people can afford them."

Aggie sat straight up. "I hope you don't discuss that!" she exclaimed.

Bettina smiled. "How nice to find that you are really just nice elderly
ladies after all!" she said. "Of course we discuss it. Is it anything to
be ashamed of?"

"When I was a girl," I said tartly, "we married first and discussed
those things afterward."

"Of course you did, Aunt Lizzie," she said, smiling alluringly. She was
the prettiest girl I think I have ever seen, and that night she was
beautiful. "And you raised enormous families who religiously walked to
church in their bare feet to save their shoes!"

"I did nothing of the sort," I snapped.

"It seems to me," Aggie put in gently, "that you make very little of
love." Aggie was once engaged to be married to a young man named
Wiggins, a roofer by trade, who was killed in the act of inspecting a
tin gutter, on a rainy day. He slipped and fell over, breaking his neck
as a result.

Bettina smiled at Aggie. "Not at all," she said. "The day of blind love
is gone, that's all--gone like the day of the chaperon."

Neither of us cared to pursue this, and Tish at that moment appearing
with Jasper, Aggie and I made a move toward bed. But Jasper not going,
and none of us caring to leave him alone with Bettina, we sat down
again.

We sat until one o'clock.

At the end of that time Jasper rose, and saying something about its
being almost bedtime strolled off next door. Aggie was sound asleep in
her chair and Tish was dozing. As for Bettina, she had said hardly a
word after eleven o'clock.

Aggie and Tish, as I have said, were occupying the same room. I went to
sleep the moment I got into bed, and must have slept three or four hours
when I was awakened by a shot. A moment later a dozen or more shots were
fired in rapid succession and I sat bolt upright in bed. Across the
street some one was raising a window, and a man called "What's the
matter?" twice.

There was no response and no further sound. Shaking in every limb, I
found the light switch and looked at the time. It was four o'clock in
the morning and quite dark.

Some one was moving in the hall outside and whimpering. I opened the
door hurriedly and Aggie half fell into the room.

"Tish is murdered, Lizzie!" she said, and collapsed on the floor in a
heap.

"Nonsense!"

"She's not in her room or in the house, and I heard shots!"

Well, Aggie was right. Tish was not in her room. There was a sort of
horrible stillness everywhere as we stood there clutching at each other
and listening.

"She's heard burglars downstairs and has gone down after them, and this
is what has happened! Oh, Tish! brave Tish!" Aggie cried hysterically.

And at that Bettina came in with her hair over her shoulders and asked
us if we had heard anything. When we told her about Tish, she insisted
on going downstairs, and with Aggie carrying her first-aid box and I
carrying the blackberry cordial, we went down.

The lower floor was quiet and empty. The man across the street had put
down his window and gone back to bed, and everything was still. Bettina
in her dressing-gown went out on the porch and turned on the light. Tish
was not there, nor was there a body lying on the lawn.

"It was back of the house by the garage," Bettina said. "If only
Jasper--"

And at that moment Jasper came into the circle of light. He had a
Norfolk coat on over his pajamas and a pair of slippers, and he was
running, calling over his shoulder to some one behind as he ran.

"Watch the drive!" he yelled. "I saw him duck round the corner."

We could hear other footsteps now and somebody panting near us. Aggie
was sitting huddled in a porch chair, crying, and Bettina, in the hall,
was trying to get down from the wall a Moorish knife that Eliza Bailey
had picked up somewhere.

"John!" we heard Jasper calling. "John! Quick! I've got him!"

He was just at the corner of the porch. My heart stopped and then rushed
on a thousand a minute. Then:--

"Take your hands off me!" said Tish's voice.

The next moment Tish came majestically into the circle of light and
mounted the steps. Jasper, with his mouth open, stood below looking up,
and a hired man in what looked like a bed quilt was behind in the
shadow.

Tish was completely dressed in her motoring clothes, even to her
goggles. She looked neither to the right nor left, but stalked across
the porch into the house and up the stairway. None of us moved until we
heard the door of her room slam above.

"Poor old dear!" said Bettina. "She's been walking in her sleep!"

"But the shots!" gasped Aggie. "Some one was shooting at her!"

Conscious now of his costume, Jasper had edged close to the veranda and
stood in its shadow.

"Walking in her sleep, of course!" he said heartily. "The trip to-day was
too much for her. But think of her getting into that burglar-proof
garage with her eyes shut--or do sleep-walkers have their eyes
shut?--and actually cranking up my racer!"

Aggie looked at me and I looked at Aggie.

"Of course," Jasper went on, "there being no muffler on it, the racket
wakened her as well as the neighborhood. And then the way we chased
her!"

"Poor old dear!" said Bettina again. "I'm going in to make her some
tea."

"I think," said Jasper, "that I need a bit of tea too. If you will put
out the porch lights I'll come up and have some."

But Aggie and I said nothing. We knew Tish never walked in her sleep.
She had meant to try out Jasper's racing-car at dawn, forgetting that
racers have no mufflers, and she had been, as one may say, hoist with
her own petard--although I do not know what a petard is and have never
been able to find out.

We drank our tea, but Tish refused to have any or to reply to our
knocks, preserving a sulky silence. Also she had locked Aggie out and
I was compelled to let her sleep in my room.

I was almost asleep when Aggie spoke:--

"Did you think there was anything queer about the way that Jasper boy
said good-night to Bettina?" she asked drowsily.

"I didn't hear him say good-night."

"That was it. He didn't. I think"--she yawned--"I think he kissed her."




II


Tish was down early to breakfast that morning and her manner forbade any
mention of the night before. Aggie, however, noticed that she ate her
cereal with her left hand and used her right arm only when absolutely
necessary. Once before Tish had almost broken an arm cranking a car and
had been driven to arnica compresses for a week; but this time we dared
not suggest anything.

Shortly after breakfast she came down to the porch where Aggie and I
were knitting.

"I've hurt my arm, Lizzie," she said. "I wish you'd come out and crank
the car."

"You'd better stay at home with an arm like that," I replied stiffly.

"Very well, I'll crank it myself."

"Where are you going?"

"To the drug store for arnica."

Bettina was not there, so I turned on Tish sharply. "I'll go, of
course," I said; "but I'll not go without speaking my mind, Letitia
Carberry. By and large, I've stood by you for twenty-five years, and
now in the weakness of your age I'm not going to leave you. But I warn
you, Tish, if you touch that racing-car again, I'll send for Charlie
Sands."

"I haven't any intention of touching it again," said Tish, meekly
enough. "But I wish I could buy a second-hand racer cheap."

"What for?" Aggie demanded.

Tish looked at her with scorn. "To hold flowers on the dining-table,"
she snapped.

It being necessary, of course, to leave a chaperon with Bettina, because
of the Jasper person's habit of coming over at any hour of the day, we
left Aggie with instructions to watch them both.

Tish and I drove to the drug store together, and from there to a garage
for gasoline. I have never learned to say "gas" for gasoline. It seems
to me as absurd as if I were to say "but" for butter. Considering that
Aggie was quite sulky at being left, it is absurd for her to assume an
air of virtue over what followed that day. Aggie was only like a lot of
people--good because she was not tempted; for it was at the garage that
we met Mr. Ellis.

We had stopped the engine and Tish was quarreling with the man about
the price of gasoline when I saw him--a nice-looking young man in a
black-and-white checked suit and a Panama hat. He came over and stood
looking at Tish's machine.

"Nice lines to that car," he said. "Built for speed, isn't she? What do
you get out of her?"

Tish heard him and turned. "Get out of her?" she said. "Bills mostly."

"Well, that's the way with most of them," he remarked, looking steadily
at Tish. "A machine's a rich man's toy. The only way to own one is to
have it endowed like a university. But I meant speed. What can you
make?"

"Never had a chance to find out," Tish said grimly. "Between nervous
women in the machine and constables outside I have the twelve-miles-an-
hour habit. I'm going to exchange the speedometer for a vacuum bottle."

He smiled. "I don't think you're fair to yourself. Mostly--if you'll
forgive me--I can tell a woman's driving as far off as I can see the
machine; but you are a very fine driver. The way you brought that car
in here impressed me considerably."

"She need not pretend she crawls along the road," I said with some
sarcasm. "The bills she complains of are mostly fines for speeding."

"No!" said the young man, delighted. "Good! I'm glad to hear it. So are
mine!"

After that we got along famously. He had his car there--a low gray thing
that looked like an armored cruiser.

"I'd like you ladies to try her," he said. "She can move, but she is as
gentle as a lamb. A lady friend of mine once threaded a needle as an
experiment while going sixty-five miles an hour."

"In this car?"

"In this car."

Looking back, I do not recall just how the thing started. I believe Tish
expressed a desire to see the car go, and Mr. Ellis said he couldn't let
her out on the roads, but that the race-track at the fair-ground was
open and if we cared to drive down there in Tish's car he would show us
her paces, as he called it.

From that to going to the race-track, and from that to Tish's getting in
beside him on the mechanician's seat and going round once or twice, was
natural. I refused; I didn't like the look of the thing.

Tish came back with a cinder in her eye and full of enthusiasm. "It was
magnificent, Lizzie," she said. "The only word for it is sublime. You
see nothing. There is just the rush of the wind and the roar of the
engine and a wonderful feeling of flying. Here! See if you can find this
cinder."

"Won't you try it, Miss--er--Lizzie?"

"No, thanks," I replied. "I can get all the roar and rush of wind I want
in front of an electric fan, and no danger."

He stood by, looking out over the oval track while I took three cinders
from Tish's eye.

"Great track!" he said. "It's a horse-track, of course, but it's in
bully shape--the county fair is held there and these fellows make a big
feature of their horse-races. I came up here to persuade them to hold an
automobile meet, but they've got cold feet an the proposition."

"What was the proposition?" asked Tish.

"Well," he said, "it was something like this. I've been turning the
trick all over the country and it works like a charm. The town's ahead
in money and business, for an automobile race always brings a big crowd;
the track owners make the gate money and the racing-cars get the prizes.
Everybody's ahead. It's a clean sport too."

"I don't approve of racing for money," Tish said decidedly.

But Mr. Ellis shrugged his shoulders. "It's really hardly racing for
money," he explained. "The prizes cover the expenses of the racing-cars,
which are heavy naturally. The cars alone cost a young fortune."

"I see," said Tish. "I hadn't thought of it in that light. Well, why
didn't Morris Valley jump at the chance?"

He hesitated a moment before he answered. "It was my fault really," he
said. "They were willing enough to have the races, but it was a matter
of money. I made them a proposition to duplicate whatever prize money
they offered, and in return I was to have half the gate receipts and the
betting privileges."

Tish quite stiffened. "Clean sport!" she said sarcastically. "With
betting privileges!"

"You don't quite understand, dear lady," he explained. "Even in the
cleanest sport we cannot prevent a man's having an opinion and backing
it with his own money. What I intended to do was to regulate it.
Regulate it."

Tish was quite mollified. "Well, of course," she said, "I suppose since
it must be, it is better--er,--regulated. But why haven't you
succeeded?"

"An unfortunate thing happened just as I had the deal about to close,"
he replied, and drew a long breath. "The town had raised twenty-five
hundred. I was to duplicate the amount. But just at that time a--a young
brother of mine in the West got into difficulties, and I--but why go
into family matters? It would have been easy enough for me to pay my
part of the purse out of my share of the gate money; but the committee
demands cash on the table. I haven't got it."

Tish stood up in her car and looked out over the track.

"Twenty-five hundred dollars is a lot of money, young man."

"Not so much when you realize that the gate money will probably amount
to twelve thousand."

Tish turned and surveyed the grandstand.

"That thing doesn't seat twelve hundred."

"Two thousand people in the grandstand--that's four thousand dollars.
Four thousand standing inside the ropes at a dollar each, four thousand
more. And say eight hundred machines parked in the oval there at five
dollars a car, four thousand more. That's twelve thousand for the gate
money alone. Then there are the concessions to sell peanuts, toy
balloons, lemonade and palm-leaf fans, the lunch-stands, merry-go-round
and moving-picture permits. It's a bonanza! Fourteen thousand anyhow."

"Half of fourteen thousand is seven," said Tish dreamily. "Seven
thousand less twenty-five hundred is thirty-five hundred dollars
profit."

"Forty-five hundred, dear lady," corrected Mr. Ellis, watching her.
"Forty-five hundred dollars profit to be made in two weeks, and nothing
to do to get it but sit still and watch it coming!"

I can read Tish like a book and I saw what was in her mind. "Letitia
Carberry!" I said sternly. "You take my warning and keep clear of this
foolishness. If money comes as easy as that it ain't honest."

"Why not?" demanded Mr. Ellis. "We give them their money's worth,
don't we? They'd pay two dollars for a theater seat without half
the thrills--no chances of seeing a car turn turtle or break its
steering-knuckle and dash into the side-lines. Two dollars' worth?
It's twenty!"

But Tish had had a moment to consider, and the turning-turtle business
settled it. She shook her head. "I'm not interested, Mr. Ellis," she
said coldly. "I couldn't sleep at night if I thought I'd been the cause
of anything turning turtle or dashing into the side-lines."

"Dear lady!" he said, shocked; "I had no idea of asking you to help
me out of my difficulties. Anyhow, while matters are at a standstill
probably some shrewd money-maker here will come forward before long and
make a nice profit on a small investment."

As we drove away from the fair grounds Tish was very silent; but just as
we reached the Bailey place, with Bettina and young Jasper McCutcheon
batting a ball about on the tennis court, Tish turned to me.

"You needn't look like that, Lizzie," she said. "I'm not even thinking
of backing an automobile race--although I don't see why I shouldn't, so
far as that goes. But it's curious, isn't it, that I've got twenty-five
hundred dollars from Cousin Angeline's estate not even earning four per
cent?"

I got out grimly and jerked at my bonnet-strings.

"You put it in a mortgage, Tish," I advised her with severity in every
tone. "It may not be so fast as an automobile race or so likely to turn
turtle or break its steering-knuckle, but it's safe."