# The Saturday Evening Post/Tish Plays the Game

For let Charlie Sands say what he will, and he was very unpleasant, the truth remains that our dear Tish's motives were of the highest and purest, and what we attempted was to save the happiness of two young lives.
TISH PLAYS THE GAME
By Mary Roberts Rinehart
ILLUSTRATED BY JAMES M. PRESTON
WE MET Nettie Lynn on the street the other day, and she cut us all dead. Considering the sacrifices we had all made for her, especially our dear Tish, who cut a hole in her best rug on her account, this ungrateful conduct forces me to an explanation of certain events which have caused most unfair criticism. Whatever the results, it never possible to impugn the motives behind Tish's actions.
As for the janitor of Tish's apartment house maintaining that the fruit jar buried in the floor was a portion of a still for manufacturing spirituous liquors, and making the statement that Tish's famous blackberry cordial for medicinal use was fifty per cent alcohol—I consider this beneath comment. The recipe from which this cordial is made was originated by Tish's Greataunt Priscilla, a painting of whom hangs, or rather did hang, over the mantel in Tish's living room.
The first notice Aggie and I received that Tish was embarked on one of her kindly crusades again was during a call from Charlie Sands. We had closed our cottage at Lake Penzance and Aggie was spending the winter with me. She had originally planned to go to Tish, but at the last moment Tish had changed her mind.
“You'd better go with Lizzie, Aggie,” she said. “I don't always want to talk, and you do.”
As Aggie had lost her upper teeth during an unfortunate incident at the lake which I shall relate further on, and as my house was near her dentist's, she agreed without demur. To all seeming the indications were for a quiet winter, and save for an occasional stiffness in the arms, which Tish laid to neuritis, she seemed about as usual.
In October, however, Aggie and I received a visit from her nephew, and after we had given him some of the cordial and a plate of Aggie's nut wafers he said, “Well, revered and sainted aunts, what is the old girl up to now?”
We are not his aunts, but he so designates us. I regret to say that by “the old girl” he referred to his Aunt Letitia.
“Since the war,” I said with dignity, “your Aunt Letitia has greatly changed, Charlie. We have both noticed it. The great drama is over, and she is now content to live on her memories.”
I regret to say that he here exclaimed, “Like —— she is! I'll bet you a dollar and a quarter she's up to something right now.”
Aggie gave a little moan.
“You have no basis for such a statement,” I sternly. But he only took another wafer and more of our cordial. He was preventing a cold.
“All right,” he said. “But I've had considerable experience, and she's too quiet. Besides, she asked me the other day if doubtful methods were justifiable to attain a righteous end!”
“What did you tell her?” Aggie inquired anxiously.
“I said they were not; but she didn't seem to believe me. Now mark my words: After every spell of quiet she has she goes out and gets in the papers. So don't say I haven't warned you.”
But he had no real basis for his unjust suspicions and after eating all the nut wafers in the house he went away.
“Just one thing,” he said. “I was around there yesterday, and her place looked queer to me. I missed a lot of little things she used to have. You don't suppose she's selling them, do you?”
Illustration: She Began to Dig After the Ball. She Made Eleven Jabs at it, and Then the Can Overturned. “Darn!” Said Mrs. Ostermaier. “Are You There, Miss Carberry?" “I Am," Tish Replied Grimly
Well, Tish has plenty of money and that seemed unlikely. But Aggie and I went around that evening, and it was certainly true. Her Cousin Mary Evans' blue vases were gone from the mantel of the living room, and her Grandaunt Priscilla's portrait was missing from over the fireplace. The china clock with wild roses on it that Aggie had painted herself had disappeared, and Tish herself had another attack of neuritis and had her right arm hung in a sling.
She was very noncommital when I commented on the bareness of the room.
“I'm sick of being cluttered up with truck,” she said. “We surround our bodies with too many things, and cramp them. The human body is divine and beautiful, but we surround it with—er—china clocks and what not, and it deteriorates.”
“Surround it with clothes, Tish,” I suggested, but she waved me off.
“Mens sana in corpore sano,” she said,
She had wrenched her left knee, too, it appeared and so Hannah let us out. She went into the outside corridor with us and closed the door behind her
“What did she say about her right arm and her left leg?” she inquired.
When we told her she merely sniffed.
“I'll bet she said she was sick of her aunt's picture and that clock too,” she said. “Well, she's lying, that's all.”
“Hannah!”
“I call it that. She's smashed them, and she's smashed her Grandfather Benton and the cut-glass salad bowl and a window. And the folks below are talking something awful.”
“Hannah! What do you mean?”
“I don't know,” Hannah wailed and burst into tears. “The thing she says when she's locked me out! And the noise! You'd think she was killing a rat with the poker. There's welts an inch deep in the furniture, and part of the cornice is smashed. Neuritis! She's lamed herself, that's all.”
“Maybe it's a form of physical culture, Hannah,” I suggested. “They jump about in that, you know.”
“They don't aim to kick the ceiling and break it, do they?”
Well, that was quite true, and I'll admit that we went away very anxious. Aggie was inclined to return to the unfortunate incident of the janitor and the furnace pipe when Tish was learning to shoot in the basement some years ago, and to think that she had bought a muffler or whatever it is they put on guns to stop the noise, and was shooting in her flat. I myself inclined toward a boomerang, one of which Tish had seen thrown at a charity matinée, and which had much impressed her. In fact, I happened to know that she had tried it herself at least once, for on entering her sitting room one day unexpectedly my bonnet was cut off my head without the slightest warning. But Hannah had known about the boomerang, and there would have been no need of secrecy.
However, it was not long before Tish herself explained the mystery, and to do so now I shall return to the previous summer at Lake Penzance. When we arrived in June we found to our dismay that a new golf course had been laid out, and that what was called the tenth hole was immediately behind our cottage. On the very first day of our arrival a golf ball entered the kitchen window and struck Hannah, the maid, just below the breast bone, causing her to sit on the stove. She was three days in bed on her face and had to drink her broth by leaning out over the edge of the bed. This was serious enough, but when gentlemen at different times came to the cottage with parcels wrapped to look like extra shoes, and asked Tish to keep them in the refrigerator on the back porch, we were seriously annoyed. Especially after one of them broke and leaked into the ice-tea pitcher, and Aggie, who is very fond of iced tee, looked cross-eyed for almost half an hour.
Some of the language used, too, was most objectionable, and the innocent children who carried the clubs learned it, for I cannot possibly repeat what a very small urchin said to Tish when she offered him a quarter if he would learn the Shorter Catechism. And even our clergyman's wife the Ostermaiers have a summer cottage near us—showed what we had observed was the moral deterioration caused by the game. For instance, one day she knocked a ball directly into our garbage can, which happened to have its lid off. Owing to the vines she could not see us, and she hunted for some time, tearing at Aggie's cannas as though they were not there, and finally found her ball in the can.
“Do I pick it out or play it out, caddie?” she called.
“Cost you a shot to pick it out,” said the caddie.
“I'll play it,” she said. “Give me a spoon,”
Well, it appeared that she did not mean a tablespoon, although that was certainly what she needed, for he gave her a club, and she began to dig after the ball. She made eleven jabs at it, and then the can overturned.
“Oh, damn!” she said, and just then Aggie sneezed.
“Darn!” said Mrs. Ostermaier, trying to pretend that that was what she had said before. “Are you there, Miss Carberry?”
“I am,” Tish replied grimly.
“I suppose you never expected to see me doing this!”
“Well,” Tish said slowly, “if anyone had told me that I would find my clergyman's wife in my garbage can I might have been surprised. Hannah, bring Mrs. Ostermaier the coal shovel.”
Looking back I perceive that our dear Tish's obsession dated from that incident, for when Mrs. Ostermaier had cleaned up and moved angrily away she left the old ball, covered with coffee grounds, on the path. I am inclined, too, to think that Tish made a few tentative attempts with the ball almost immediately, for I found my umbrella badly bent that night, and that something had cracked a cane left by Charlie Sands, which Aggie was in the habit of using as a pole when fishing from the dock. Strangely enough, however, her bitterness against the game seemed to grow, rather than decrease.
For instance, one day when Aggie was sitting on the edge of our little dock, fishing and reflecting, and Tish was out in the motor boat, she happened to see a caddie on the roof looking for a ball which had lodged there. She began at once to shout at him to get down and go away, and in her indignation forgot to slow down the engine. The boat therefore went directly through the dock and carried it away, including that portion on which Aggie was sitting. Fortunately Aggie always sat on an air cushion at such times, and as she landed in a sitting position she was able to remain balanced until Tish could turn the boat around and come to the rescue. But the combination of the jar and of opening her mouth to yell unfortunately lost Aggie her upper set, as I have before mentioned.
But it was not long before dear Tish's argus eye had discovered a tragedy on the links. A very pretty girl played steadily, and always at such times a young man would skulk along, taking advantage of trees et cetera to keep out of her sight, while at the same time watching her hungrily. Now and then he varied his method by sitting on the shore of the lake. He would watch her until she came close, and then turn his head and look out over the water. And if ever I saw misery in a human face it was there.
Aggie's heart ached over him, and she carried him a cup of tea one afternoon. He seemed rather surprised, but took it, and Aggie said there was a sweetheart floating in it for him,
“A mermaid, eh?” he said. “Well, I'm for her then. Mermaids haven't any legs, and hence can't play golf, I take it.” But he looked out over the lake again and resumed his bitter expression. “You can't tell, though. They may have a water variety, like polo.” He sighed and drank the tea absently, but after that he cheered somewhat and finally he asked Aggie a question.
“I wish you'd look at me,” he said. “I want an outside opinion. Do I look like a golf hazard?”
“A what?” said Aggie.
“Would you think the sight of me would cut ten yards off a drive, or a foot off a putt?” he demanded.
Illustration: Tish Led the Way to an Alleyway at the Side and Was Able to Reach the Fire Escape
“You look very nice, I'm sure,” Aggie replied. But he only got up and shook the sand off himself and stared after the girl.
“That's it,” he said. “Very nice! You've hit it.” Then he turned on her savagely, to her great surprise. “If I weren't so blamed nice I'd set off a dozen sticks of dynamite on this crazy links and blow myself up with the last one.”
Aggie thought he was a little mad.
We saw him frequently after that, never with the girl, but he began to play the game himself. He took some lessons, too, but Tish had to protest for the way he and the professional talked to each other. Mr. McNab would show him how to fix his feet and even arrange his fingers on the club handle. Then he would drive, and the ball would roll a few feet and stop.
“Well, I suppose I waggled my ear that time, or something,” he would say.
“Keep your eye on the ball!” Mr. McNab would yell, dancing about. “Ye've got no strength of character, mon.”
“Let me kick it, then. I'll send it farther.”
After that they would quarrel, and Tish would have to close the windows.
But Tish's interest in golf was still purely that of the onlooker. This is shown by the fact that at this time and following the incident of the dock she decided that we must all learn to swim. That this very decision was to involve us in the fate of the young man, whose name was Bobby Anderson, could not have been foreseen, nor that that involvement would land us in various difficulties and a police station.
Tish approached the swimming matter in her usual convincing way.
“Man,” she said, “has conquered all the elements—earth, air and water. He walks. He flies. He swims or should. The normal human being to-day should be as much at home in water as in the air, and vice versa, to follow the great purpose.”
“If that's the great purpose we would have both wings and fins,” said Aggie rather truculently, for she saw what was coming. But Tish ignored her.
“Water,” she went on, “is sustaining. Hence boats. It is as easy to float the human body as a ship.”
“Is it?” Aggie demanded. “I didn't float so you could notice it the night you backed the car into the lake.”
“You didn't try,” Tish said sternly. “You opened your mouth to yell, and that was the equivalent of a leak in a ship. I didn't say a leaking boat would float, did I?”
We thought that might end it, but it did not. When we went upstairs to bed we heard her filling the tub, and shortly after that she called us into the bathroom. She was lying extended in the tub, with a Turkish towel covering her, and she showed us how, by holding her breath, she simply had to stay on top of the water.
“I advise you both,” she said, “to make this experiment to-night. It will give you confidence to-morrow.”
We went out and closed the door, and Aggie clutched me by the arm.
“I'll die first, Lizzie,' she said. “I don't intend to learn to swim, and I won't. A fortune teller told me to beware of water, and that lake's full of tin cans.”
“She was floating in the tub, Aggie,” I said to comfort her, although I felt a certain uneasiness myself,
“Then that's where I'll do my swimming,” Aggie retorted, and retired to her room.
The small incident of the next day would not belong in this narrative were it not that it introduced us to a better acquaintance with the Anderson boy, and so led to what follows. For let Charlie Sands say what he will, and he was very unpleasant, the truth remains that our dear Tish's motives were of the highest and purest, and what we attempted was to save the happiness of two young lives.
Be that as it may, on the following morning Tish came to breakfast in a mackintosh and bedroom slippers, with an old knitted sweater and the bloomers belonging to her camping outfit beneath. She insisted after the meal that we similarly attire ourselves, and sat on the veranda while we did so, reading a book on the art of swimming, which she had had for some time.
Although she was her usual calm and forceful self both Aggie and I were very nervous, and for fear of the chill Aggie took a small quantity of blackberry cordial. She felt better after that and would have jumped off the end of the dock, but Tish restrained her, advising her to wet her wrists first and thus to regulate and not shock the pulse.
Tish waded out, majestically indifferent, and we trailed after her. Of what followed I am not quite sure. I know, when we were out to our necks, and either I had stepped on a broken bottle or something had bitten me, she turned and said:
“This will do. I am going to float, Lizzie. Give me time to come to the surface.”
She then took a long breath and threw herself back into the water, disappearing at once. I waited for some time, but only a foot emerged, and that only for a second. I might have grown anxious, but it happened that just then Aggie yelled that there was a leech on her, sucking her blood, and I turned to offer her assistance. One way and another it was some time before I turned to look again at Tish—and she had not come up. The water was in a state of turmoil, however, and now and then a hand or a leg emerged.
I was uncertain what to do. Tish does not like to have her plans disarranged, and she had certainly requested me to give her time. I could not be certain, moreover, how much time would be required. While I was debating the matter I was astonished to hear a violent splashing near at hand, and to see Mr. Anderson, fully dressed, approaching us. He said nothing, but waited until Tish's foot again reappeared, and then caught it, thus bringing her to the surface.
For some time she merely stood with her mouth open and her eyes closed. But at last she was able to breathe and to speak, and in spite of my affection for her I still resent the fact that her first words were in anger.
“Lizzie, you are a fool!” she said.
“You said to give you time, Tish.”
“Well, you did!” she snapped. “Time to drown.” She then turned to Mr. Anderson and said, “Take me in, please. And go slowly. I think I've swallowed a fish.”
I got her into the cottage and to bed, and for an hour or two she maintained that she had swallowed a fish and could feel it flopping about inside her. But after a time the sensation ceased and she said that either she had been mistaken or it had died. She was very cold to me.
Mr. Anderson called that afternoon to inquire for her and we took him to her room. But at first he said very little, and continually consulted his watch and then glanced out the window toward the links. Finally he put the watch away and drew a long breath.
“Four-seven,” he said despondently. “Just on time, like a train! You can't beat it.”
“What is on time?” Tish asked.
“It's a personal matter,” he observed, and lapsed into a gloomy silence.
Aggie went to the window, and I followed. The pretty girl had sent her ball neatly onto the green and, trotting over after it, proceeded briskly to give it a knock and drop it into the cup. He looked up at us with hopeless eyes.
“Holed in one, I suppose?” he inquired.
“She only knocked it once and it went in,” Aggie said
“It would.” His voice was very bitter. “She's the champion of this part of the country. She's got fourteen silver cups, two salad bowls, a card tray and a soup tureen, all trophies. She's never been known to slice, pull or foozle. When she gets her eye on the ball it's there for keeps. Outside of that, she's a nice girl.”
“Why don't you learn the game yourself?” Tish demanded.
“Because I can't. I've tried. You must have heard me trying. I can't even caddie for her. I look at her and lose the ball, and it has got to a stage new where the mere sight of me on the links costs her a stroke a hole. I'll be frank with you,” he added after a slight pause. “I'm in love with her. Outside of golf hours she likes me too. But the damned game—sorry, I apologize—the miserable game is separating us. If she'd break her arm or something,” he finished savagely, “I'd have a chance.”
There was a thoughtful gleam in Tish's eye when he fell into gloomy silence.
“Isn't there any remedy?” she asked
“Not while she's champion. A good beating would help, but who's to beat her?”
“You can't?”
“Listen,” he said. “In the last few months, here and at home, I've had ninety golf lessons, have driven three thousand six hundred balls, of which I lost four hundred and ninety-six, have broken three drivers, one niblick and one putter. I ask you,” he concluded dreamily, “did you ever hear before of anyone breaking a putter?”
The thoughtful look was still in Tish's eye when he left, but she said nothing. A day or two after, we watched him with Mr. McNab, and although he was standing with his back to the house when he drove, we heard a crash overhead and the sheet-iron affair which makes the stove draw was knocked from the chimney and fell to the ground.
He saw us and waved a hand at the wreckage
“Sorry,” he called “I keep a roofer now for these small emergencies and I'll send him over.” Then he looked at Mr. McNab, who had sat down on a bunker and had buried his face in his hands
“Come now, McNab,” he said. “Cheer up; I've thought of a way. If I'm going to drive behind me, all I have to do is to play the game backwards.”
Mr. McNab said nothing. He got up, gave him a furious glance, and then with his hands behind him and his head bent went back toward the clubhouse. Mr. Anderson watched him go, teed another ball and made a terrific lunge at it. It rose, curved and went into the lake.
“Last ball!” he called to us cheerfully. “Got one to lend me?”
I sincerely hope I am not doing Tish an injustice, but she certainly said we had not. Yet Mrs. Ostermaier's ball—— But she may have lost it. I do not know.
It was Aggie who introduced us to Nettie Lynn, the girl in the case. Aggie is possibly quicker than the rest of us to understand the feminine side of a love affair, for Aggie was at one time engaged to a Mr. Wiggins, a gentleman who had pursued his calling as master roofer on and finally off a roof. (More than once that summer Tish had observed how useful he would have been to us at that time, as we were constantly having broken slates, and as the water spout was completely stopped with balls.) And Aggie maintained that Nettie Lynn really cared for Mr. Anderson.
“If Mr. Wiggins were living,” she said gently, “and if I played golf, if he appeared unexpectedly while I was knocking the ball or whatever it is they do to it, if I really cared—and you know, Tish, I did—I am sure I should play very badly.”
“You don't need all those ifs to reach that conclusion,” Tish said coldly.
A day or two later Aggie stopped Miss Lynn and offered her some orangeade, and she turned out to be very pleasant and friendly. But when Tish had got the conversation switched to Mr. Anderson she was cool and somewhat scornful.
“Bobby?” she said, lifting her eyebrows. “Isn't he screamingly funny on the links!”
“He's a very fine young man,” Tish observed, eying her steadily.
“He has no temperament.”
“He has a good disposition. That's something.”
“Oh, yes,” she admitted carelessly. “He's as gentle as a lamb.”
Tish talked it over after she had gone. She said that the girl was all right, but that conceit over her game had ruined her, and that the only cure was for Bobby to learn and then beat her to death in a tournament or something, but that Bobby evidently couldn't learn, and so that was that. She then fell into one of those deep silences during which her splendid mind covers enormous ranges of thought, and ended by saying something to the effect that if one could use a broom one should be able to do something else.
We closed up the cottage soon after and returned to town.
Now and then we saw Nettie Lynn on the street, and once Tish asked us to dinner and we found Bobby Anderson there. He said he had discovered a place in a department store to practice during the winter, with a net to catch the balls, but that owing to his unfortunate tendencies he had driven a ball into the well of the store, where it had descended four stories and hit a manager on the back. He was bent over bowing to a customer or it would have struck his head and killed him.
“She was there,” he said despondently. “She used to think I was only a plain fool. Now she says I'm dangerous, and that I ought to take out a license for carrying weapons before I pick up a club.”
“I don't know why you want to marry her,” Tish said in a sharp voice.
“I don't either,” he agreed. “But I do. That's the hell—I beg your pardon—that's the deuce of it.”
It was following this meeting that the mysterious events occurred with which I commenced this narrative. And though there may be no connection it was only a day or two later that I read aloud to Aggie an item in a newspaper stating that an elderly woman who refused to give her name had sent a golf ball through the practice net in a downtown store and that the ball had broken and sent off a fire alarm, with the result that the sprinkling system, which was a new type and not dependent on heat, had been turned on in three departments. I do know, however, that Tish's new velvet hat was never seen from that time on, and that on our shopping excursions she never entered that particular store.
In coming now to the events which led up to the reason for Nettie Lynn cutting us, and to Charlie Sands' commentary that his wonderful aunt, Letitia Carberry, should remember the commandment which says that honesty is the best policy—I am sure he was joking, for that is not one of the great Commandments—I feel that a certain explanation is due. This explanation is not an apology for dear Tish, but a statement of her point of view.
Letitia Carberry has a certain magnificence of comprehension. If in this magnificence she loses sight of small things, if she occasionally uses perhaps unworthy methods to a worthy end, it is because to her they are not important. It is only the end that counts.
She has, too, a certain secrecy. But that is because of a nobility which says in effect that by planning alone she assumes sole responsibility. I think also that she has little confidence in Aggie and myself, finding us but weak vessels into which she pours in due time the overflow from her own exuberant vitality and intelligence.
With this in mind I shall now relate the small events of the winter. They were merely straws, showing the direction of the wind of Tish's mind. And I dare say we were not observant. For instance, we reached Tish's apartment one afternoon to find the janitor there in a very ugly frame of mind. “You threw something out of this window, Miss Carberry,” he said, “and don't be after denying it.”
“What did I throw out of the window?” Tish demanded loftily. “Produce it.”
“If it wasn't that it bounced and went over the fence,” he said, “I'd be saying it was a flatiron. That parrot just squawked once and turned over.”
“Good riddance, too,” Tish observed. “The other tenants ought to send me a vote of thanks.”
“Six milk bottles on Number Three's fire escape,” the janitor went on, counting on his fingers; “the wash line broke for Number One and all the clothes dirty, and old Mr. Ferguson leaning out to spit and almost killed—it's no vote of thanks you'll be getting.”
When she had got rid of him Tish was her usual cool and dignified self. She offered no explanation and we asked for none. And for a month or so nothing happened. Tish distributed her usual list of improving books at the Sunday-school Christmas treat, and we packed our customary baskets for the poor. On Christmas Eve we sang our usual carols before the homes of our friends, and except for one mischance, owing to not knowing that the Pages had rented their house, all was symbolic of the peace and good will of the festive period. At the Pages', however, a very unpleasant person as us for —— sake to go away and let him sleep.
But shortly after the holidays Tish made a proposition to us, and stated that it was a portion of a plan to bring about the happiness of two young and unhappy people.
“In developing this plan,” she said, “it is essential that we all be in the best of physical condition; what I believe is known technically as in the pink. You two, for instance, must be able to walk for considerable distances, carrying a weight of some size.”
“What do you mean by 'in the pink'?” Aggie asked suspiciously.
“What you are not,” Tish said with a certain scorn. “How many muscles have you got?”
“All I need,” said Aggie rather acidly.
“And of all you have, can you use one muscle, outside of the ordinary ones that carry you about?”
“I don't need to.”
“Have you ever stood up, naked to the air, and felt shame at your flaccid muscles and your puny strength?”
“Really, Tish!” I protested. “I'll walk if you insist. But I don't have to take off my clothes and feel shame at my flabbiness to do it.”
She softened at that, and it ended by our agreeing to fall in with her mysterious plan by going to a physical trainer. I confess to a certain tremor when we went for our first induction into the profundities of bodily development. There was a sign outside, with a large picture of a gentleman with enormous shoulders and a pigeon breast, and beneath it were the words: “I will make you a better man.” But Tish was confident and calm.
The first day, however, was indeed trying. We found, for instance, that we were expected to take off all our clothing and to put on one-piece jersey garments, without skirts or sleeves, and reaching only to the knees. As if this were not enough, the woman attendant said when we were ready “In you go, dearies,'” and shoved us into a large bare room where a man was standing with his chest thrown out, and wearing only a pair of trousers and a shirt which had shrunk to almost nothing. Aggie clutched me by the arm.
“I've got to have stockings, Lizzie!” she whispered. “I don't feel decent.”
But the woman had closed the door, and Tish was explaining that we wished full and general muscular development.
“The human body,” she said, “instantly responds to care and guidance, and what we wish is simply to acquire perfect coördination. 'The easy slip of muscles underneath the polished skin,' as some poet has put it.”
“Yeah,” said the man. “All right. Lie down in a a row on the mat, and when I count, raise the right leg in the air and drop it. Keep on doing it. I'll tell you when to stop.
“Lizzie!” Aggie threw at me in an agony. “Lizzie, I simply can't!”
“Quick,” said the trainer. “I've got four pounds to take off a welterweight this afternoon. Right leg, ladies. Up, down; one, two——”
Never since the time in Canada when Aggie and I were taking a bath in the lake, and a fisherman came and fished from a boat for two hours while we sat in the icy water to our necks, have I suffered such misery.
“Other leg,” said the trainer. And later: “Right leg up, cross, up, down. Left leg up, cross, up, down.” Aside from the lack of dignity of the performance came very soon the excruciating ache of our weary flesh. Limb by limb and muscle by muscle he made us work, and when we were completely exhausted on the mat he stood us up on our feet in a row and looked us over.
“You've got a long way to go, ladies,” he said sternly. “It's a gosh-awful shame the way you women neglect your bodies. Hold in the abdomen and throw out the chest. Balance easily on the ball of the foot. Now touch the floor with the finger tips, as I do.”
“Young man,” I protested, “I haven't been able to do that since I was sixteen.”
“Well, you've had a long rest,” he said coldly. “Put your feet apart. That'll help.”
When the lesson was over we staggered out, and Aggie leaned against a wall and moaned. “It's too much, Tish,” she said feebly. “I'm all right with my clothes on, and anyhow, I'm satisfied as I am. I'm the one to please, not that wretch in there.”
Tish, however, had got her breath and said that she felt like a new woman, and that blood had got to parts of her it had never reached before. But Aggie went sound asleep in the cabinet bath and had to be assisted to the cold shower. I mention this tendency of hers to sleep, as it caused us some trouble later on.
In the meantime Tish was keeping in touch with the two young people. She asked Nettie Lynn to dinner one night, and seemed greatly interested in her golf methods. One thing that seemed particularly to interest her was Miss Lynn's device for keeping her head down and her eye on the ball.
“After I have driven,” she said, “I make it a rule to count five before looking up.”
“How do you see where the ball has gone?” Tish asked.
“That is the caddie's business.”
“I see,” Tish observed thoughtfully, and proceeded for some moments to make pills of her bread and knock them with her fork, holding her head down as she did so.
Another thing which she found absorbing was Miss Lynn's statement that a sound or movement while she drove was fatal, and that even a shadow thrown on the ball while putting decreased her accuracy.
By the end of February we had become accustomed to the exercises and now went through them with a certain sprightliness, turning back somersaults with ease, and I myself now being able to place my flat hand on the floor while standing. Owing to the cabinet baths I had lost considerable flesh and my skin seemed a trifle large for me in places, while Aggie looked, as dear Tish said, like a picked spare rib.
At the end of February, however, our training came to an abrupt end, owing to a certain absent-mindedness on Tish's part. Tish and Aggie had gone to the gymnasium without me, and at ten o'clock that night I telephoned Tish to ask if Aggie was spending the night with her. To my surprise Tish said nothing for a moment, and then asked me in a strained voice to put on my things at once and meet her at the door to the gymnasium building.
Quick as I was, she was there before me, hammering at the door of the building, which appeared dark and deserted. It appeared that the woman had gone home early with a cold, and that Tish had agreed to unfasten the bath cabinet and let Aggie out at a certain time, but that she had remembered leaving the electric iron turned on at home and had hurried away, leaving Aggie asleep and helpless in the cabinet.
The thought of our dear Aggie, perspiring her life away, made us desperate, and on finding no response from within the building Tish led the way to an alleyway at the side and was able to reach the fire escape. With mixed emotions we watched her valiant figure disappear and then we turned to the main entrance through which we expected her to reappear with our unhappy friend.
But we were again unfortunate. A few moments later the door indeed was opened, but to give exit to Tish in the grasp of a very rude and violent watchman, who immediately blew loudly on a whistle. I saw at once that Tish meant to give no explanation which would involve taking a strange man into the cabinet room, where our hapless Aggie was completely disrobed and helpless; and to add to our difficulties three policemen came running and immediately placed us under arrest.
Fortunately the station house was near, and we were saved the ignominy of a police wagon. Tish at once asked permission to telephone Charlie Sands, and as he is the night editor of a newspaper he was able to come at once. But Tish was of course reticent as to her errand before so many men, and he grew slightly impatient.
“All right,” he said. “I know you were in the building. I know how you got in. But why? I don't think you were after lead pipe or boxing gloves, but these men do.”
“I left something there, Charlie.”
“Go a little further. What did you leave there?”
“I can't tell you. But I've got to go back there at once. Every moment now——”
“Get this,” said Charlie Sands sternly: “Either you come over with the story or you'll be locked up. And I'm bound to say I think you ought to be.”
In the end Tish told the unhappy facts, and two reporters, the sergeant and the policemen were all deeply moved. Several got out their handkerchiefs, and the sergeant turned quite red in the face. One and all they insisted on helping to release our poor Aggie, and most of them escorted us back to the building, only remaining in the corridor at our request while we entered the cabinet room.
Although we had expected to find Aggie in a parboiled condition the first thing which greeted us was a violent sneeze.
“Aggie!” I called desperately.
She sneezed again, and then said in a faint voice, “Hurry up. I'b dearly frozed.”
We learned later that the man in charge had turned off all the electricity when he left, from a switch outside, and that Aggie had perspired copiously and been on the verge of apoplexy until six o'clock, and had nearly frozen to death afterwards. Tish draped a sheet around the cabinet, and the policemen et cetera came in. Aggie gave a scream when she saw them, but it was proper enough, with only her head showing, and they went out at once to let her get her clothing on.
Before he put us in a taxicab that night Charlie Sands spoke to Tish with unjustifiable bitterness.
“I have given the watchman twenty dollars for that tooth you loosened, Aunt Tish,” he said. “And I've got to set up some food for the rest of this outfit. Say, fifty dollars, for which you'd better send me a check.” He then slammed the door, but opened it immediately. “I just want to add this,” he said: “If my revered grandfather has turned over in his grave as much as I think he has, he must be one of the liveliest corpses underground.”
I am happy to record that Aggie suffered nothing more than a heavy cold in the head. But she called Tish up the next morning and with unwonted asperity said, “I do thig, Tish, that you bight have put a strig aroud your figer or sobethig, to rebeber be by!”
It was but a week or two after this that Tish called me up and asked me to go to her apartment quickly, and to bring some arnica from the drug store. I went as quickly as possible, to find Hannah on the couch in the sitting room moaning loudly, and Tish putting hot flannels on her knee cap.
“It's broken, Miss Tish,” she groaned “I know it is.”
“Nonsense,” said Tish. “Anyhow I called to you to stay out.”
In the center of the room was a queer sort of machine, with a pole on an iron base and a dial at the top, and a ball fastened to a wire. There was a golf club on the floor.
Later on, when Hannah had been helped to her room and an arnica compress adjusted, Tish took me back and pointed to the machine,
“Two hundred and twenty yards, Lizzie,” she said, “and would have registered more but for Hannah's leg. That's driving.”
She then sat down and told me the entire plan. She had been working all winter, and was now confident that she could defeat Nettie Lynn. She had, after her first experience in the department store, limited herself—in another store—to approach shots. For driving she had used the machine. For putting she had cut a round hole in the carpet and had sawed an opening in the floor beneath, in which she had placed a wide-mouthed jar.
“My worst trouble, Lizzie,” she said, “was lifting my head. But I have solved it. See here.”
She then produced a short leather strap, one end of which she fastened to her belt and the other she held in her teeth. She had almost lost a front tooth at the beginning, she said, but that phase was over.
“I don't even need it any more,” she told me. “To-morrow I shall commence placing an egg on the back of my neck as I stoop, and that with a feeling of perfect security.”
She then looked at me with her serene and confident glance.
“It has been hard work, Lizzie,” she said. “It is not over. It is even possible that I may call on you to do things which your ethical sense will at first reject. But remember this, and then decide: The happiness of two young and tender hearts is at stake.”
She seemed glad of a confidante, and asked me to keep a record of some six practice shots, as shown by the dial on the machine. I have this paper before me as I write:
1st drive, 230 yards. Slight pull.
2nd drive, 245 yards. Direct.
3rd drive, 300 yards, Slice
4th drive, 310 yards. Direct.
5th drive. Wire broke.
She then showed me her clubs, of which she had some forty-six, not all of which, however, she approved of. It was at that time that dear Tish taught me the names of some of them, such as niblick, stymie, cleek, mashie, putter, stance, and brassie, and observed mysteriously that I would need my knowledge later on. She also advised that before going back to Penzance we walk increasing distances every day.
“Because,” she said, “I shall need my two devoted friends this summer; need them perhaps as never before.”
I am bound to confess, however, that on our return to Penzance Tish's first outdoor work at golf was a disappointment. She had a small ritual when getting ready; thus she would say, firmly, suiting the action to the phrase: “Tee ball. Feet in line with ball, advance right foot six inches, place club, overlap right thumb over left thumb, drop arms, left wrist rigid, head down, eye on the ball, shoulders steady, body still. Drive!” Having driven she then stood and counted five slowly before looking up.
At first, however, she did not hit the ball, or would send it only a short distance But she worked all day, every day, and we soon saw a great improvement. As she had prophesied, she used us a great deal. For instance, to steady her nerves she would have us speak to her when driving, and even fire a revolver out toward the lake.
We were obliged to stop this, however, for we were in the habit of using the barrel buoy of the people next door to shoot at, until we learned that it was really not a buoy at all, but some fine old whisky which they were thus concealing, and which leaked out through the bullet holes.
We were glad to find that Nettie Lynn and Bobby were better friends than they had been the year before, and to see his relief when Tish told him to give up his attempts at golf altogether.
“I shall defeat her so ignominiously, Bobby,” she said, “that she will never wish to hear of the game again.”
“You're a great woman, Miss Carberry,” he said solemnly.
“But you, too, must do your part.”
“Sure I'll do my part. Name it to me, and that is all.'
But he looked grave when she told him.
“First of all,” she said, “you are to quarrel with her the night before the finals. Violently.”
“Oh, I say!”
“Second, when she is crushed with defeat you are to extract a promise, an oath if you like, that she is through with golf.”
“You don't know her,” he said. Might as well expect her to be through with th her right hand.”
But he agreed to think it over and, going out to the lake front, sat for a long time lost in thought. When he came back he agreed, but despondently.
“She may love me after all this,” he said, “but I'm darned if I think she'll like me.”
But he cheered up later and planned the things they could do when they were both free of golf and had some time to themselves. And Mr. McNab going by at that moment, he made a most disrespectful gesture at his back.
It is painful, in view of what followed, to recall his happiness at that time.
I must confess that Aggie and I were still in the dark as to our part in the tournament. And our confusion as time went on was increased by Tish's attitude toward her caddie. On her first attempt he had been impertinent enough, goodness knows, and Tish had been obliged to reprove him.
“Your business here, young man,” she said, “is to keep your eye on the ball.”
“That's just what you're not doing,” he said smartly. “Lemme show you.”
Tish said afterwards that it was purely an accident, for he broke every rule of stance and so on, but before she realized his intention he had taken the club from her hand and sent the ball entirely out of sight.
“That's the way,” he said. “Whale 'em!”
But recently her attitude to him had changed. She would bring him in and give him cake and ginger ale, and she paid him far too much. When Hannah showed her disapproval he made faces at her behind Tish's back, and once he actually put his thumb to his nose. To every remonstrance Tish made but one reply.
“Develop the larger viewpoint,” she would observe, “and remember this: I do nothing without a purpose.”
“Then stop him making snoots at me,” said Hannah. “I'll poison him, that's what I'll do.”
Thus our days went on. The hours of light Tish spent on the links. In the evenings her busy fingers were not idle, for she was making herself some knickerbockers from an old pair of trousers which Charlie Sands had left at the cottage, cutting them off below the knee and inserting elastic in the hem, while Aggie and I, by the shade of our lamp, knitted each a long woolen stocking to complete the outfit.
It was on such an evening that Tish finally revealed her plan, that plan which has caused so much unfavorable comment since. The best answer to that criticism is Tish's own statement to us that night.
“Frankly,” she admitted, “the girl can beat me. But if she does she will continue on her headstrong way, strewing unhappiness hither and yon. She must not win!”
Briefly the plan she outlined was based on the undermining of Nettie's morale. Thus, Aggie sneezes during the hay-fever season at the mere sight of a sunflower. She was to keep one in her pocket, and at a signal from Tish was to sniff at it, holding back the resultant sneeze, however, until the champion was about to drive.
“I'll be thirty yards behind, with the crowd, won't I?" Aggie asked.
“You will be beside her,” Tish replied solemnly. “On the day of the finals the caddies will go on a strike, and I shall insist that a strange caddie will spoil my game, and ask for you.”
It appeared that I was to do nothing save to engage Mr. McNab in conversation at certain times and thus distract his attention, the signal for this being Tish placing her right hand in her trousers pocket. For a sneeze from Aggie the signal was Tish coughing once.
“At all times, Aggie,” she finished, “I shall expect you to keep ahead of us, and as near Nettie Lynn's ball as possible. The undulating nature of the ground is in our favor, and will make it possible now and then for you to move it into a less favorable position. If at the fourteenth hole you can kick it into the creek it will be very helpful.”
Aggie was then rehearsed in the signals, and did very well indeed.
Mr. McNab was an occasional visitor those days. He was watching Tish's game with interest.
“Ye'll never beat the champion, ma'm,” he would say, “but ye take the game o' gowf as it should be taken, wi' humility and prayer.”
More than once he referred to Bobby Anderson, saying that he was the only complete failure of his experience, and that given a proper chance he would make a golfer of him yet.
“The mon has aye the build of a gowfer,” he would say wistfully.
It is tragic now to remember that incident of the day before the opening of the tournament, when Bobby came to our cottage and we all ceremoniously proceeded to the end of the dock and flung his various clubs, shoes, balls, cap and bag into the lake, and then ate a picnic supper on the shore. When the moon came up he talked of the future in glowing terms.
“I feel in my bones, Miss Tish,” he said, “that you will beat her. And I know her; she won't stand being defeated, especially by——” Here he coughed, and lost the thread of his thought. “I'm going to buy her a horse,” he went on. “I'm very fond of riding.”
He said, however, that it was going to be very hard for him to quarrel with her the evening before the finals.
“I'm too much in love,” he confessed. “Besides, outside of golf we agree on everything—politics, religion, bridge; everything.”
It was then that Tish made one of her deeply understanding comments.
“Married life is going to be very dull for you both,” she said.
It was arranged that in spite of the quarrel he should volunteer to caddie for the champion the day of the strike, and to take a portion of Aggie's responsibility as to changing the lie of the ball, and so forth. He was not hopeful, however.
“She won't want me any more than the measles,” he said.
“She can't very well refuse, before the crowd,” Tish replied.
I pass with brief comment over the early days of the women's tournament. Mrs. Ostermaier was eliminated the first day with a score of 208, and slapped her caddie on the seventeenth green. Tish turned in only a fair score, and was rather depressed; so much so that she walked in her sleep and wakened Aggie by trying to tee a ball on the end of her—Aggie's—nose. But the next day she was calm enough, and kept her nerves steady by the simple device of knitting as she followed the ball. The result was what she had expected, and the day of the finals saw only Nettie Lynn and our dear Tish remaining.
All worked out as had been expected. The caddies went on a strike that day, and before the field Nettie was obliged to accept Bobby's offer to carry her clubs. But he was very gloomy and he brought his troubles to me.
“Well, I've done it,” he said. “And I'm ruined for life. She never wants to see me again. It's my belief,” he added gloomily, “that she could have bit the head off an iron club last night and never have known she had done it.”
He groaned and mopped his face with his handkerchief.
“I'm not sure it's the right thing after all,” he said. “The madder she is the better she'll play. All she's got to do is to imagine I'm the ball, and she'll knock it a thousand yards.”
There was some truth in this probably, for she certainly overshot the first hole, and the way she said “Mashie!” to Bobby Anderson really sounded like an expletive. Tish won that hole, they halved the second, and owing to Aggie sneezing without apparent cause during Tish's drive on the third, Nettie took it. On the fourth, however, Tish was fortunate and drove directly into the cup.
We now entered the undulating portion of the course, and I understand that Bobby and Aggie both took advantage of this fact to place Nettie Lynn's ball in occasional sand traps, and once to lose it altogether. Also that the device of sneezing during a putt was highly effective, so that at the ninth hole dear Tish was three up.
Considering the obloquy which has fallen to me for my own failure to coöperate, I can only state as follows: I engaged Mr. McNab steadily in conversation, and when he moved to a different position I faithfully followed him; but I was quite helpless when he suddenly departed, taking an oblique course across the field, nor could I approach Tish to warn her.
And on the surface all continued to go well. It was now evident to all that the champion was defeated, and that the champion knew it herself. In fact the situation was hopeless, and no one, I think, was greatly surprised when after driving for the fourteenth hole she suddenly threw down her club, got out her handkerchief and left the course, followed by Bobby.
Our misfortune was that Aggie was ahead in the hollow and did not see what had happened. Her own statement is that she saw the ball come and fall into a dirt road, and that all she did was to follow it and step on it, thus burying it out of sight; but also that no sooner had she done this than Mr. McNab came charging out of the woods like a mad bull and rushed at her, catching her by the arm.
It was at that moment that our valiant Tish, flushed with victory, came down the slope.
Mr. McNab was dancing about and talking in broad Scotch, but Tish finally caught the drift of what he was saying—that he had suspected us all day, that we would go before the club board, and that Tish would get no cup.
“You've played your last gowf on these links, Miss Carberry, and it's a crying shame the bad name you've gien us,” was the way he finished, all the time holding to Aggie's arm. It was thus I found them.
“Very well,” Tish said in her coldest tone. “I shall be very glad to state before the board my reasons, which are excellent. Also to register a protest against using the lake front before my cottage for the cooling of beer, et cetera. I dare say I may go home first?”
“I'll be going with you, then.”
“Very well,” Tish replied. “And be good enough to release Miss Pilkington. She was merely obeying my instructions.” Thus our lion-hearted Tish, always ready to assume responsibility, never weakening, always herself.
I come now to a painful portion of this narrative, and the reason for Nettie Lynn cutting us dead on the street. For things moved rapidly within the next few moments. Mr. McNab settled himself like a watchdog on our cottage steps, and there Tish herself carried him some blackberry cordial and a slice of coconut cake. There, too, in her impressive manner she told him the story of the plot.
“Think of it, Mr. McNab,” she said. “Two young and loving hearts yearning for each other, and separated only by the failure of one of them to learn the game of golf!”
Mr. McNab was profoundly moved,
“He wouldna keep his eye on the ball,” he said huskily. “I like the lad fine, but he would aye lift his heid.”
“If this brings them together you would not part them, would you?”
“He wouldna fallow through, Miss Carberry. He juist hit the ball an' quit.”
“If they were married, and he could give his mind to the game he'd learn it, Mr. McNab.”
The professional brightened. “Maybe. Maybe,” he said. “He has the body of the gowfer. If he does that, we'll say na mair Miss Carberry.”
And, do what we would, Mr. McNab stood firm on that point. The thought of his failure with Bobby Anderson had rankled, and now he made it a condition of his silence on the day's events that he have a free hand with him that summer.
“Gie him to me for a month,” he said, “and he'll be a gowfer, and na care whether he's married or no.”
We ate our dinner that night in a depressed silence, although Tish's silver cup graced the center of the table. Before we had finished, Bobby Anderson came bolting in and kissed us each solemnly.
“It's all fixed,” he said. “She has solemnly sworn never to play golf again, and I've brought her clubs down, to follow mine into the lake.”
“You'd better keep them,” Tish said. “You're going to need them.”
She then broke the news to him, and considering the months she had spent to help him he was very ungrateful, I must say. Indeed, his language was shocking.
“Me learn golf?” he shouted. “You tell McNab to go to perdition and take his cursed golf links with him. I won't do it! This whole scheme was to eliminate golf from my life. It has pursued me for three years. I have nightmares about it. I refuse. Tell McNab I've broken my leg. Wait a minute and I'll go out and break it.”
But he could not refuse, and he knew it.
So far as we know, Nettie Lynn has never played golf since. She impresses me as a person of her word. But why she should be so bitter toward us we cannot understand. As dear Tish frequently remarks, who could have foreseen that Mr. McNab would actually make a golfer out of Bobby? Or that he would become so infatuated with the game as to abandon practically everything else?
They are married now, and Hannah knows their cook. She says it is sometimes nine o'clock at night in the summer before he gets in to dinner.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1958, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 65 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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