I cannot marry a slacker.
MR. C. (furiously angry and glaring at her): You know better than that!
MYRTLE: Not at all. Can you deny that you haven't registered yet?
MR. C.: What's that got to do with it? I daresay I'm losing my mind. Itwouldn't be much wonder if I have. When I think of the way I've sufferedlately--look at me!
MYRTLE (in a somewhat softened voice): Have you really suffered?
MR. C.: I? Good Lord, Myrtle--why, I haven't slept for weeks. I----
But here he stopped, with his eyes fixed on the roof overhead.
"Watch out!" he yelled. "Get back. Myrtle, she'll fall on you."
"Not at all," said Tish's calm voice from overhead. There was a raspingsound, and then a long wire fell past the window. "Now," she calledtriumphantly, "let your policeman telephone for the Sheriff and a posse!That was a party wire, and that farmhouse over there is on it. Thereisn't another telephone for ten miles."
Well, I looked around for Myrtle, and she was on the guest room bed,face down.
"Oh," she groaned, "I wouldn't have missed it for a trip to Europe. Andhis face! Miss Lizzie, did you see his face?" She then got up suddenlyand put her arms around me. "I'm simply madly happy, Miss Lizzie," shesaid. "I have to kiss somebody, and since he--may I kiss you?"
Well, of course I allowed her to, but I was surprised. It was notnatural, somehow.
Myrtle came down soon after and said that Mr. Culver was bringing somewater from the well, and would he be allowed to come in with it? ButTish was firm on this point. She gave her consent, however, to hisleaving the pail on the porch and then retiring to the chestnut tree. Hedid so, whistling to signify that he was at a safe distance, and I thencarried it in.
"I say," he called to me when he saw me, "this situation is getting onmy nerves. I carried off that policeman, for one thing. He was on duty."
"You needn't stay here."
"I daresay not," he replied rather bitterly. "But what I want to ask isthis: Won't it be deucedly unpleasant for you three, when I report thatyou deliberately put my car out of commission so I could not get back bynine o'clock to register? Of course," he went on, "a box of tacks mayhave spilled itself on the road, but I never heard of a barbed wirefence trying to crawl across a road and getting run over, like a snake."
I reported this to Tish, and I saw that she was uneasy, although shemerely remarked that he still had two legs, and that she had not askedhim to follow us. All she had set out to do was to see that he didn'tget married before he registered, and she was doing that to the best ofher ability. The rest was his affair.
It was six o'clock by that time, and Tish had had nothing to eat sincefive in the morning, and none of us had had any luncheon. Although awoman who thinks little or nothing of food, I found her, shortlyafterwards, in the pantry, looking into jars. There was nothing,however, except some salt, a little baking powder and a package of driedsage. But Aggie, going to an attic window to look for the policeman,discovered about a quart of flour in a barrel up there, and scraping itout, brought it down.
"I might bake some biscuits, Tish," she suggested. "I feel that I'llhave to have some nourishment. I'm so weak that my knees shake."
"Myrtle," Tish said abruptly, with that quick decision so characteristicof her, "you might tell that worthless young man of yours to look in thegranary. Sometimes the Knowleses' hens come over here, and I daresaythey've eaten enough off the place to pay for the eggs."
But Myrtle, after a conference from the window, reported that Mr. Culverhad said he would get the eggs, if there were any, on condition that heget his pro rata share of them.
"If there are ten eggs," she said, "he wants two. And if there is an oddnumber he claims the odd one."
This irritated Tish, but at last she grudgingly consented. In a shorttime, therefore, Mr. Culver knocked at the kitchen door.
"I am leaving," he said, "eleven eggs, eight of undoubtedrespectability, two questionable, and one that I should advise openinginto a saucer first. Also some corn meal from the granary. And if youwill set out a pail and come after me if I am wounded, I shall go aftera cow that I see in yon sylvan vale."
His voice was strangely cheerful, but, indeed, the prospect of food hadcheered us all, although I could see that Tish was growing more andmore anxious, as time went on and no policeman appeared in theKnowleses' machine. However, we worked busily. Myrtle, building a fireand setting the table with the Biggses' dishes, and Aggie makingbiscuits, without shortening, while Tish stirred the corn meal mush.
"Many a soldier in the trenches," she said, "would be grateful for sucha frugal meal. When one reflects that the total cost of mush and milk isbut a trifle----"
Here, however, we were interrupted by Mr. Culver outside. He spoke ingasps and we heard the pail clatter to the porch floor.
"I regretfully report----" he said, through the keyhole. "No milk. Wrongsex. Sorry."
Ten of the eggs proving good, we placed two of them on a plate withthree biscuits and a bowl of mush, and Tish carried it out, placing iton the floor of the porch, much as she would have set it out for thedog.
"Here," she called. "And when you have finished you might go after thataccomplice of yours. He's probably asleep somewhere."
"Dear lady," said Mr. Culver, "I would, but I dare not. A fierycreature, breathing fury from its nostrils, is abroad and----"
But Tish came in and slammed the door.
It was after supper that we missed Tish. She was nowhere in the house,and the kitchen door, which had been bolted, was unlocked. Aggie wrungher hands, but Myrtle was quite calm.
"I shouldn't worry about her," she said. "She's about as well able totake care of herself as any woman I ever saw."
It was now quite dark, and our fears increased. But soon afterwards Tishcame in. She went to the stove and pouring out a cup of hot water, drankit in silence. Then she said:
"I've been to the Knowleses'. The dratted idiots are all away, probablyto the schoolhouse, registering. The car's gone, and the house isclosed."
"And the policeman?" I asked.
"I didn't see him," said Tish. But she did not look at me. She fell topacing up and down the kitchen, deep in thought.
"What time is it, Lizzie?" she asked.
"Almost eight."
Here Tish gave what in another woman would have been a groan.
"It's raining," she observed, and fell to pacing again. At last she toldme to follow her outside, and I went, feeling that she had at last madea decision. Her attitude throughout her period of cogitation had beennot unlike that of Napoleon before Waterloo. There were the same benthead and clasped hands, the same melancholy mixed with determination.
Mr. Culver was sitting under his tree, with his coat collar turned uparound his neck. Tish stopped and surveyed him with gentle dignity.
"You may enter the house," she said. "The country will gain nothing byyour having pneumonia, although personally I am indifferent. And, afterthinking over your case, I have come to this decision." She paused, asfor oratorical effect. "I shall deliver you to your registrationprecinct by nine o'clock," she said impressively, "and immediately afterthat, I shall see that you two are married. I am not young," she wenton, "and perhaps I do not think enough of sentiment. But it shall neverbe said of me that I parted two loving hearts, one of which may, beforethe snow flies, be still and pulseless in a foreign grave."
She then, still with that new air of melancholy majesty, led me to thebarn, leaving him staring.
It was there, by means of a key hanging round her neck, that LetitiaCarberry, great hearted woman and patriot that she is, bared her innerheart to me. In the barn was a large and handsome ambulance, with largered crosses on side and top, which she had offered to the government ifshe might drive it herself. But the government which she was even thenso heroically serving had refused her permission, and Tish had buriedher disappointment in the bucolic solitude of her farm.
Such, in brief, was Tish's tragic secret.
"I shall take i
t in to the city tonight, Lizzie," she said heavily. "Andtomorrow I shall present it to the Red Cross. Some other hand than minewill steer it through shot and shell, and ultimately into Berlin. It haseverything. There's a soup compartment and--well," she finished, "it isdoing its work even tonight. Get in."
We found Aggie on the porch, having with her usual delicacy of feelingleft the lovers alone inside. When she saw the Ambulance, however, shefell to sneezing violently, crying out between paroxysms that if Tishwas going to the war, she was also. But Tish hushed her sternly.
There was a good engine in the