Tish Plays the Game (8 page)

On receiving this information Tish stood for a moment in deep thought. She then instructed Aggie to go on to the balloon hangar and open the doors, while she and I gathered up her personal possessions and followed.

It is not our method to question Tish at such times; ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die. But I confess to a certain uneasiness. If she proposed to escape by means of the baby blimp, well and good. At the same time, it required a dozen men to haul the balloon out of its shed, and we were but three weak women. I believed that she had overlooked this, but, as usual, I underestimated her.

On reaching the hangar I found the door open, and I could see in the darkness the large balloon, with what appeared to be a smaller one beside it, a matter of surprise to me, as I knew of no other. But I could not see Aggie.

I entered as quietly as possible and advanced into the hangar.

“Aggie!” I called in a low tone. “Aggie! Where are you?”

There was a silence, then from somewhere above came a sneeze, followed by Aggie’s voice, broken and trembling.

“On—on a r-r-rafter, Lizzie,” she said.

I could not believe my ears and advanced towards the sound. Suddenly Aggie yelled, and at the same moment the smaller balloon lurched and came toward me.

“Run!” Aggie yelled. “Run. She’s after you!”

Unfortunately, the warning came too late. Something reached out from the running balloon and caught me around the body, and the next moment, to my horror, I was lifted off the ground and thrust up into the timbers which supported the roof of the building. I am a heavy woman, and only by a desperate effort did I catch a rafter as the thing let go of me, and drew myself to safety. Aggie was somewhere close at hand, sobbing in the darkness.

It was a moment before I could speak. Then I managed to ask what had happened to me.

“It’s Katie, Lizzie,” Aggie said between sobs. “I think she must have found the blackberry cordial we left here, and it’s gone to her head!”

Our position was very unfortunate, especially as time was important. Katie was merely playful, but on any attempt to move on our part she would trumpet loudly and reach up for us. Most annoying of all, she had taken a fancy to one of my shoes and kept reaching up and pulling at it.

“Let her have it, if it keeps her quiet,” Aggie said tartly when I told her. “Give her anything she wants. Give her your bonnet. I never liked it, anyhow.”

It was then after midnight, but fortunately it was very soon after that that we saw an electric flash and heard our dear Tish’s voice.

“Aggie! Lizzie!” she called. And then she saw the elephant and advanced toward her.

“Katie!” she said. “What are you doing here? I’ve been looking for you all over the lot?” She then turned the flash on Katie and beheld her swaying. “Shame on you,” she said. “I believe you’ve been drinking.”

“Don’t reprove her; kill her”; Aggie said suddenly from overhead, and Tish looked up.

“I thought so,” she said rather sharply. “I cannot count on the faintest coöperation. I need two courageous hearts, and I find you roosting like frightened chickens on a beam. That elephant’s harmless. She’s only playing.”

“I don’t like the way she plays, then,” I protested angrily. “If you do, play with her yourself.”

But Tish had no time for irony. She simply picked up a piece of wood from the ground and hit Katie on the trunk with it.

“Now!” she said. “Bring them down, you shame to your sex. And be gentle. Remember you are not quite yourself.”

Thanks to Tish’s dominance over all types of inferior minds, Katie at once obeyed, and brought us down without difficulty.

Then she ambled unsteadily to a corner, and proceeded to empty another bottle of cordial we had concealed there.

I have always considered, in spite of its dénouement, that Tish’s idea of using Katie to drag the blimp out of the shed was a brilliant one. Katie herself made no demur. She stood swaying gently while we harnessed her to the balloon and at the word she bent to her work. Tish was in the car, examining the controls at the time, and turning up what I believe are called the flippers, which direct its course away from Mother Earth.

But I have blamed her for her impatience in starting the engine before we had unfastened Katie’s harness. Tish has a tendency now and then toward hasty action, which she always regrets later. There is this excuse for her, however: She had apparently no idea that the balloon would rise the moment the propeller reached a certain number of revolutions. But it did.

It seemed only a moment after we heard the engine start that I felt the car lifting from the earth, and in desperation flung myself into it, as Aggie did the same thing from the other side.

The next instant we were well above the ground, and from below there was coming a terrible trumpeting and squealing. We all looked over the side, and there beneath us was Katie, fastened to us by her harness and rising with us!

I shall never forget that moment. One and all, we are members of the Humane Society. And if Katie’s ropes and straps gave way, she would certainly fall to a terrible death. Even Tish lost her sang-froid and, frantically starting the engine, endeavored to maneuver the thing to earth again. But anybody who has traveled in a blimp knows that it cannot be brought to earth again without outside aid.

Moreover, we were already outside the studio grounds, and traveling over roofs which Katie barely escaped. Indeed, from certain sounds, we had reason to believe that she was striking numerous chimneys, and I think now that this may account for the stories of a mysterious electric storm that night, which destroyed a half dozen chimneys in one block.

It was a fortunate thing that Tish remembered in time to elevate the flippers still further, thus giving us a certain amount of leeway. But a strong breeze from the sea had sprung up and was carrying us toward the city, and it became increasingly evident that, even if we cleared the highest buildings, Katie would not.

It was a tragic moment Aggie proposed lightening the craft by throwing out the bottles of liquor, which had been a part of the smugglers’ cargo in the picture, but Tish restrained her.

“Better to kill an elephant,” she said, “than to brain some harmless wretch below.”

Katie meanwhile had lapsed into the silence of despair, or possibly had fainted. I do not know, nor is it now pertinent, for in a few moments the situation solved itself. We had barely missed the roof of the First National Bank Building when the blimp gave a terrific jar, and momentarily stopped.

On looking over the side the cause of this was explained. Katie had landed squarely on the flat roof of the building, and had immediately thrown her trunk around a chimney and braced herself. Even as we looked, her harness parted and left her free of us.

Katie was saved.

Glancing again over the side as we quickly rose, we could see her in the moonlight still hugging her chimney and gazing after us. What thoughts were hers we cannot know.

I am glad to solve in this manner a problem which caused much perplexity throughout the country—namely, how an elephant could have reached the roof of the First National Bank Building, to which the only possible entrance was through a trapdoor two feet six inches each way. As will be seen, the explanation, like that of many mysteries, is entirely simple.

It is necessary to touch but lightly on the unfortunate incident which concluded our escape. That the apparently friendly villagers who, the next morning, ran out from their peaceful businesses to haul on our ropes and bring us to a landing, should so change in attitude in a few moments has ever since been a warning to us of the innate suspicion of human nature.

How could they look at Tish’s firm and noble face, and so misread it? Why did they not at once open the smugglers’ rum cargo which had remained in the car, and discover that the liquid in the bottles was only cold tea?

Can it be possible that Charlie Sands’ explanation is correct, and that the fact that many of them purchased the stuff from the sheriff and later threatened to lynch him, can account for his peculiar malignity to us?

One thing is certain—they held us in the local jail for days, until Charlie Sands was able to rescue us.

We never saw Mr. Stein again. Nor, frankly, did we ever expect to see Tish’s picture, since she had not finished it. But, as all the world now knows, it opened in June of this current year, and made a great success.

But our surprise at this was as nothing compared with the fact that Tish’s name did not appear in connection with it, and that the announcements read: “Featuring Miss Betty Carlisle.”

There had been no Miss Carlisle in Tish’s cast.

On the opening night we went to see it, accompanied by Charlie Sands. He said very little while watching Tish perform her various exploits, but when, after the shooting scene, Tish prepared to depart he protested.

“I’ve stood it up to this point,” he said grimly. “I propose to see it through.”

“There will be no more, Charles,” Tish explained in an indulgent manner. “I quit at the end of this scene. Be glad of one picture which does not end with an embrace.”

But she had spoken too soon!

Judge of our amazement when we saw our Tish, on the screen, disappear through a doorway, and return a moment later, a young and beautiful girl, who was at once clasped in Mr. Macmanus’ arms.

The title was: Her Elderly Disguise at Last Removed!

I
T WAS LAST MAY
that Tish’s cousin, Annabelle Carter, wrote to her and asked her to take Lily May for the summer.

“I need a rest, Tish,” she wrote. “I need a rest from her. I want to go off where I can eat a cup custard without her looking at my waistline, and can smoke an occasional cigarette without having to steal one of hers when she is out. I may even bob my hair.”

“She’ll smoke no cigarettes here,” Tish interjected. “And Annabelle Carter’s a fool. Always was and always will be. Bob her hair indeed!”

She read on: “I want you to take her, Tish, and show her that high principles still exist in the older generation. They seem to think we are all hypocrites and whited sepulchers. But most of all, I want to get her away from Billy Field. He is an enchanting person, but he couldn’t buy gas for her car. Jim says if he can earn a thousand dollars this summer he’ll think about it. But outside of bootlegging, how can he? And he has promised not to do that.”

Tish had read us the letter, but she had already made up her mind.

“It is a duty,” she said, “and I have never shirked a duty. Annabelle Carter has no more right to have a daughter than I have; I’ve seen her playing bridge and poker before that child. And she serves liquor in her house, although it is against the law of the nation.”

And later on: “What the girl needs,” she said, “is to be taken away from the artificial life she is living, and to meet with Nature. Nature,” she said, “is always natural. A mountain is always a mountain; the sea is the sea. Sufficient of either should make her forget that boy.”

“Too much of either might, Tish,” I said, rather tartly. “You can drown her or throw her over a precipice, of course. But if you think she’ll trade him for a view or a sailboat, you’d better think again.”

But Tish was not listening.

“An island,” she said, “would be ideal. Just the four of us, and Hannah. Simple living and high thinking. That’s what the young girls of to-day require.”

“I often wonder,” Aggie said sadly, “what Mr. Wiggins would have thought of them! I remember how shocked he was when his Cousin Harriet used ice on her face before a party, to make her cheeks pink.”

So the matter was determined, and Tish appealed to Charlie Sands, her nephew, to find her an island. I shall never forget his face when she told him why.

“A flapper!” he said. “Well, your work’s cut out for you all right.”

“Nonsense!” Tish said sharply. “I have been a girl myself. I understand girls.”

“Have you made any preparations for her?”

“I’ve bought a set of Louisa M. Alcott. And I can hire a piano if she wants to keep in practice.”

“Oh, she’ll keep in practice all right,” he said, “but I wouldn’t bother with a piano.” He did not explain this, but went away soon after. “I’ll do my best to find you an island,” he said cryptically, as he departed, “but the chances are she can swim.”

That last sentence of his made Tish thoughtful, and she determined that, if our summer was to be spent on the sea, we should all learn to swim. I cannot say that the result was successful. Indeed, our very first lesson almost ended in a tragedy, for it was Tish’s theory that one must start in deep water.

“The natural buoyancy of the water is greater there,” she said. “One goes in and then simply strikes out.”

She did this, therefore, standing on the diving board in the correct position—the instructor was not yet ready—and made a very nice dive. But she did not come up again, although the water was very agitated, and after a time Aggie became alarmed and called the instructor. He found her at last, but she was so filled with water that we abandoned the lesson for the day.

As the instructor said to her, “All you need is a few goldfish, lady, and you’d be a first-class aquarium.”

And then, with all our ideas of setting Lily May an example of dignity and decorum, along about the middle of June Hannah, going out on a Thursday, came creeping in about nine o’clock at night and brought in the tray with cake and blackberry cordial, with her hat on.

“What do you mean,” Tish demanded, fixing her with a stony glare, “by coming in here like that?”

Hannah set the tray down and looked rather pale.

“It’s my hat, Miss Tish,” she said; “and it’s my head.”

“Take it off,” said Tish. “Your hat, not your head. Not that you’d miss one more than the other.”

So Hannah took her hat off, and she had had her hair shingle-bobbed! I never saw anything more dreadful, unless it was our dear Tish’s face. She looked at her for some moments in silence.

“Have you seen yourself?” she demanded.

“Yes.”

“Then I shall add no further punishment,” said Tish grimly. “But as I do not propose to look at you in this condition, you will continue to wear a hat until it grows out again.”