Tish Plays the Game (2 page)

“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, or 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 now 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 drearily, “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 flat-iron. 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.”