Tish Plays the Game (5 page)

But perhaps, more than anything, I am influenced by the desire to present the facts to Charlie Sands, Tish’s nephew, for, owing to his attitude the day he met us at the train, Tish has never deigned to make a full explanation.

We were on the platform, and I was taking a cinder out of Aggie’s eye, when we perceived him, standing close by and surveying us gloomily.

“My life,” he said, “has resolved itself into meeting you three when you have come back from doing something you shouldn’t.” He then picked up a bag or two and observed: “Even the chap in the Bible only had one prodigal.”

He said nothing more until we were waiting for a taxi, when he observed that his nerves were not what they had been, and who was to secure bail for us when he was gone? We could only meet this with silence, but the fact is that he has never yet lost his money in that way, and never will.

“Someday,” he said, “I shall drop over of heart failure on receiving one of your wires, and then where will you be?”

“The circumstances were unusual,” Tish said with dignity.

“I’ll tell the world they were!” he said. “Unusual as h—l.”

He then lapsed into silence, and so remained until we were in the taxicab, on our way to Tish’s apartment. Then he leaned forward and stared fixedly at his Aunt Letitia.

“Now!” he said. “We’re going to have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. What about that elephant?”

Tish raised her eyebrows.

“Elephant?” she said.

“‘Elephant’ is the word I used. Look me square in the eye, last surviving female relative of mine, and deny you had anything to do with it! The moment the Associated Press wires began to come in, I knew.”

“Very well,” Tish said acidly. “If you know, there is no need to explain.”

And from that moment to this, she never has.

In order to bring the elephant incident in its proper sequence it is necessary to return to the autumn of last year, and to tell of the various incidents which led up to that awful night, and the roof of the First National Bank of Los Angeles.

During all of last winter Tish had been making a survey of what she called the art, the educational value and the business of moving pictures. She was, in a word, studying them. And she came to certain conclusions. Thus, she believed that the public had wearied of sentiment and was ready for adventure without sex. Also, that the overemphasis on love in the pictures was weakening the moral fiber of the nations.

“It was when sex replaced war,” she observed to Aggie and myself, “that Rome fell and Babylon crumbled to the dust.

I agreed with her, but Aggie had certain reservations. When, as frequently happened, Tish left the theater just before the final embrace, thus registering her disapproval, Aggie sometimes loitered, to put on her overshoes or to find her glasses. Indeed, once trying to take her departure while looking back over her shoulder, she had a really bad fall in the theater aisle.

But our dear Tish showed Aggie considerable indulgence, as Aggie’s life had at one time held a romance of its own, she having been engaged to a Mr. Wiggins, who had not survived the engagement.

I have mentioned Mr. Wiggins because, although it is thirty years since he passed over, it was Aggie’s getting into touch with him in the spirit world which brought Mr. Stein into our lives. And it was Stein who brought about all our troubles. We were both very happy to find our dear Tish occupied with a new interest, as since the war, when she had captured the town of X——single handed—for Aggie was at the time on the church steeple and I had gone back for reinforcements—she had become rather listless.

“I find it difficult,” she had once acknowledged, “to substitute the daily dozen for my activities in France, and the sight of four women quarreling madly over a bridge table for a back scratcher with a pink bow on it simply makes me homesick for the war.”

Judge of our disappointment, therefore, when with the first of March, Tish’s interest in the pictures apparently lagged. From spending night after night watching them, she suddenly became invisible to us for long periods, and Hannah reported that at these times she would lock herself in her room, burning innumerable papers at the end of the period of seclusion. Also that, listening at the door, she could hear our dear Tish walking up and down the floor muttering to herself; and she reported that these active periods were followed by quiescent ones, when she could hear the rapid scratching of a pen.

Our first anxiety was that Tish had got herself into some sort of difficulty with her affairs, and this was not lessened by Hannah’s bringing to us one evening a scrap of charred paper on which were the words: “I will kill myself first.”

Had Charlie Sands not been out of town we would have gone to him, but he was in Europe, and did not return until four months later, when we were able to call on him for bail, as I have said. We had, therefore, no inkling of what was happening when, finding Tish in an approachable mood one evening, Aggie suggested that she try automatic writing.

Aggie had at last got into touch with Mr. Wiggins through a medium, and learned that he was very happy. But, although I have seen her sit for hours with a pencil poised over a sheet of paper, she had secured no written message from him. She therefore suggested that Tish try it.

“I’ve always felt that you are psychic, Tish,” she said. “Every now and then when I touch you I get a spark, like electricity. And I have frequently heard knocks on the furniture when you are in a dark room.”

“I’ve got bruises to show for them too,” Tish said grimly.

Well, though Tish at first demurred, she finally agreed, and after Aggie had placed a red petticoat over the lamp to secure what she called the psychic light, Tish made the attempt.

“I have no faith in it,” she said, “but I shall entirely retire my personality, and if there is a current from beyond, it shall flow through me unimpeded.”

Very soon we heard the pencil moving, and on turning on the light later we were electrified to see the rough outline of an animal, which Aggie has since contended might have been intended for Katie, the elephant, but which closely resembled those attempts frequently made to draw a pig with the eyes closed. Underneath was the word “stein.”

In view of later developments we know now that the word “stein” was not from Mr. Wiggins—although Aggie remembered that he had once or twice referred, when thirsty, to a stein of something or other—but that it was a proper name.

That at least a part of the message had a meaning for our dear Tish is shown by a cryptic remark she made to the room.

“Thanks,” she said, to whatever spirit hovered about us. “I’ll do it. It was what I intended, anyhow.”

J
UST A MONTH LATER
Tish telephoned one morning for Aggie and myself to go there that afternoon. There was a touch of sharpness in her manner, which with Tish usually means nervous tension.

“And put on something decent, for once,” she said. “There’s no need to look as though you were taking your old clothes for an airing, to keep out the moths.”

Tish was alone when we arrived. I could smell sponge cakes baking, and Tish had put on her mother’s onyx set and was sitting with her back to the light. She looked slightly feverish, and I commented on it, but she only said that she had been near the stove.

When she was called out, however, Aggie leaned over to me.

“Stove, nothing!” she said. “She’s painted her face! And she’s got a new transformation!” Had Charlie Sands himself appeared wearing a toupee we could not have been more astounded. And our amazement continued when Hannah brought in a tea tray with the Carberry silver on it, silver which had been in a safe-deposit vault for twenty years.

“Hannah,” I demanded, “what is the matter?”

“She’s going to be married! That’s what,” said Hannah, putting down the tray with a slam. “No fool like an old fool!” Then she burst into tears. “She spent the whole morning in a beauty parlor,” she wailed. “Look at her finger nails! And callin’ me in to draw up her corset on her!” Neither Aggie nor I could speak for a moment. As I have said, our dear Tish had never shown any interest in the other sex. Indeed, I think I may say that Tish’s virginity of outlook regarding herself is her strongest characteristic. It is her proud boast that no man has ever offered her the most chaste of salutes, and her simple statement as to what would happen if one did has always been a model of firmness.

I have heard her remark that when the late Henry Clay observed “Give me liberty or give me death,” he was referring to marriage.

But Aggie had been correct. There was a bloom on dear Tish’s face never placed there by the benign hand of Nature. Had I seen Mr. Ostermaier, our minister, preaching a sermon in a silk hat I should not have felt more horrified. And our anxiety was not lessened by Tish’s first remark when she returned.

“I shall want you two as witnesses,” she said. “And I shall make just one remark now. I know your attitude on certain subjects, so I ask you simply to remember this: I believe we owe a duty to the nation, especially with regard to children.”

“Good heavens, Tish!” Aggie said, and turned a sort of greenish white. “A woman of your age—”

“What’s my age got to do with it?” Tish snapped. “I simply say—”

But just then the doorbell rang, and Hannah announced a gentleman.

It was a Mr. Stein.

Aggie has told me since that the thought of Tish marrying was as nothing to her then, compared with the belief that she was marrying out of the Presbyterian Church. And she knew the moment she saw him that Mr. Stein was not a Presbyterian. But as it developed and as all the world knows now, it was not a matter of marriage at all.

Mr. Stein was the well-known moving-picture producer.

While Aggie and I were endeavoring to readjust our ideas he sat down, and looked at Tish while rubbing his hands together.

“Well, Miss Carberry,” he said, “I’ve brought the contracts.”

“And the advance?” Tish inquired calmly.

“And the advance. Certified check, as you requested.”

“You approve of my idea?”

“Well,” he said, “you’re right in one way. Sex has been overdone in pictures. The censors have killed it. When you’re limited to a five-foot kiss—well, you know. You can’t get it over, that’s all. We’ve had to fall back on adventure. Not even crime, at that. Would you believe it, we’ve had to change a murder scene just lately to the corpse taking an overdose of sleeping medicine by mistake. And we can’t have a woman show her figure on a chaise longue in a tea gown, while the bathing-suit people get by without any trouble. It’s criminal, that’s all. Criminal!”

“You have missed my idea,” Tish said coldly. “I wrote that picture to prove that a love interest, any love interest, is not essential to a picture.”

He agreed with what we now realize was suspicious alacrity.

“Certainly,” he said. “Certainly! After all, who pays the profits on pictures? The women, Miss Carberry. The women! Do up the dishes in a hurry—get me?—and beat it for the theater. Like to sit there and imagine themselves the heroine. And up to now we’ve never given them a heroine over seventeen years of age!”

He reflected on this, almost tearfully.

“Well,” he said, “that’s over now. There are twenty-nine million women over forty in America to-day, and everyone will see this picture. That is, if we do it.”

“If you do it?” Tish inquired, gazing at him through her spectacles.

“When I told the casting director to find me a woman for the part he went out and got drunk. He’s hardly been sober since.”

“You haven’t found anyone?”

“Not yet.”

Tish had picked up her knitting, and Mr. Stein sat back and surveyed her for a few moments in silence. Then he leaned forward.

“Excuse me for asking, Miss Carberry,” he said, “but have you ever driven a car?”

“I drove an ambulance in France.”

“Really?” He seemed interested and slightly excited. “Then the sound of a gun wouldn’t scare you, I dare say?”

“I would hardly say that. I shoot very well. I’m considered rather good with a machine gun, I believe.”

He sat forward on the edge of his chair, and stared at her.

“Ever ride a horse?” he inquired. “Not hard, you know, with a Western saddle. You just sit in it and the horse does the rest.”

Tish looked at him through her spectacles.

“There is no argument for the Western saddle as against the English,” she said firmly. “I have used them both, Mr. Stein. One rides properly by balance, not adherence.”

Mr. Stein suddenly got out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

“Would you believe it!” he muttered. “And me just happening to be in town on a little matter of alimony! Does everything! By heaven, I believe she could fill a tooth!”

He then stared again at Tish and said, “You’re not by any chance related to the Miss Carberry who captured the town of X— from the Germans, I suppose?”

“My friends here, and I, did that; yes.”

He stared at us all without saying anything for a moment. Then he moistened his lips.

“Well, well!” he said. “Well, well! Why, we ran a shot of you, Miss Carberry, in our news feature, when you were decorated and kissed by that French general, What’s-His-Name.”

“I prefer not to recall that.”

“Surely, surely,” he agreed. He then got up and bowed to Tish. “Miss Carberry,” he said, “I apologize, and I salute you. I came here to offer you a fixed price for your story. A moment ago I decided to offer you the part of the woman of—er—maturity in your picture, with two hundred dollars a week and a double for the stunts. I now remove the double, and offered you a thousand a week for your first picture. If that goes, we’ll talk business.”

If Tish reads this I will ask her at this moment to pause and think. Did I or did I not enter a protest? Did Aggie warn her or did she not? And was it not Tish herself who silenced us with a gesture, and completed her arrangements while Aggie softly wept?

She cannot deny it.

One final word of Tish’s I must record, in fairness to her.

“If I do this, Mr. Stein,” she said, “there must be a clear understanding. This is purely a picture of adventure and is to teach a real moral lesson.”