SALVAGE
I
After Charlie Sands had gone to a training camp in Ohio there was agreat change in Tish. She seemed for the first time to regret that shewas a woman, and there were times when that wonderful poise and dignitythat had always distinguished her, even under the most tryingcircumstances, almost deserted her. She wrote, I remember, a number ofletters to the President, offering to go into the Secret Service, andsending a photograph of the bandits she had caught in Glacier Park. Butshe only received a letter from Mr. Tumulty in reply, commencing "May Inot thank you," but saying that the Intelligence Department had recentlybeen increased by practically the entire population of the country, andsuggesting that she could best use her energies for the national welfareby working for the return of the Democratic Party in 1920.
However, as Tish is a Republican she was not interested in this, and fora time she worked valiantly for the Red Cross and spent her eveningslearning the national anthem. But she recited it, since, as thewell-known writer, Mr. Irvin Cobb, has observed, it can only be properlysung by a boy whose voice is changing. It was evident, however, that shewas increasingly restive, and as I look back I wonder that we did notrealize that there was danger in her very repression.
As Aggie has said, Tish is volcanic in her temperament; she remainsinactive for certain preparatory periods, but when she overflows shedoes so thoroughly.
The most ominous sign was when, in July of 1917, she stopped knittingand took up French.
Only the other day, while house cleaning, she came across the aeroplanephotograph of the French village of V----, where our extraordinaryexperience befell us, and she turned on us both with that satiric yetkindly gaze which we both knew so well.
"If you two idiots had had your way," she observed, "I should have beenknitting so many socks for Charlie Sands that he'd have had to be acentipede to wear 'em all, instead of----"
"Tish," Aggie said in a shivering voice, "I wish you wouldn't talk aboutit. I can't bear it, that's all. It sets me shivering."
Tish eyed her coldly. "The body is entirely controlled by the mind,Aggie," she reminded her. "And when I remember how nearly your lack ofcontrol cost us our lives, when you insisted on sneezing----"
"Insisted! If you had been in a shell hole full of water up to yourneck, Tish Carberry----"
"The difference between you and me, Aggie," Tish replied calmly, "isthat I should not have been in a shell hole full of water up to myneck." The war was over then, of course, but there was still a disturbedcondition in certain countries, and Tish's eyes grew reflective.
"I see they are thinking of sending a real army into Russia," she saidthoughtfully. "I suppose that Russian laundress of the Ostermaiers'could teach a body to talk enough to get about with."
Shortly after that Aggie disappeared, and I found her later on in Tish'sbathroom crying into a Turkish towel.
"I won't go, Lizzie," she said, "and that's flat! I've done my share,and if Tish Carberry thinks I am going to go through the rest of my lifefalling into shell holes and being potted at by all sort of strange menshe can just think again. Besides that, I have been true to the memoryof one man for a good many years, and I simply refuse to be kissed byany more of those immoral foreigners."
Aggie had in her youth been betrothed to a gentleman in the roofingbusiness, who had met with an unfortunate accident, owing to havingslipped on a tin gutter, without overshoes, one rainy day; and it isquite true that we had all been kissed by two French generals and a manin civilian clothes who had not even been introduced to us. But up tothat time we had kept the osculatory incident a profound secret.
"Aggie," I said with sudden suspicion, "you haven't told Mrs. Ostermaierabout that affair, have you?"
Aggie put down the towel and looked at me defiantly.
"I have, Lizzie," she said. "Not all of it, but some. She said she hadgone to the moving pictures with the youngest girl, but that she hadbeen obliged to take her away before it was over, owing to a picturefrom France of Tish's being kissed by a French general. She said that assoon as he had kissed her on one cheek she turned the other, and thatshe thinks the effect on Dolores was extremely bad."
It was a great shock to us all to learn that the incident of the town ofV---- had thus been made public, and that there was a moving picture ofour being decorated, et cetera, going about the country. It is, Ibelieve, quite usual to kiss the persons receiving the Croix de Guerre,even when of the masculine sex, and I know positively that Tish neversaw that French general again.
However, in view of the unfortunate publicity I have decided to makethis record of the actual incident of the French town of V----. For thestory has got into the papers, and only yesterday Tish discovered thatthe pleasant young man who had been trying to sell her a washing machinewas really a newspaper reporter in disguise.
Certain things are not true. We did not see or have any conversationwith the former Emperor of the Germans; nor were any of us wounded,though Aggie got a piece of plaster in her right eye when a shell hitthe church roof, and I was badly scratched by barbed wire. It is nottrue, either, that Aggie had her teeth knocked out by a German sentry.She unfortunately fell in the darkness and lost her upper set, and itwas impossible to light a match in order to search for them.
It was, as I have said, in July of the first year of the war that bothAggie and I noticed the change in Tish. She grew moody and abstracted,and on two Sundays in succession she turned over her Sunday-school classto me and went for long walks into the country. Also, going to herapartment for Sunday dinner on, I believe, the second Sunday of themonth we were startled to see the Andersons, very nice people whooccupy the lower floor of the building, running out wildly into thestreet. They said that the janitor had been quarreling with some one inthe furnace cellar, and that from high words, which they could plainlyhear, they had got to shooting, and a bullet had come up through thefloor and hit the phonograph.
I had a strange feeling at once, and I caught Aggie's agonized eyes onme. We remained for some time in the street, and then, everythingseeming to be quiet, we ventured in, with two policemen leading the way,and the Anderson baby left outside in its perambulator for fear ofaccident. All was quiet, however, and we made our way upstairs to Tish'sapartment. She was waiting for us, and reading the _PresbyterianBanner_, but I thought she was almost too calm when we told her of theAndersons' terrible experience.
"It's a good riddance," she said, referring to the phonograph. "Besides,what right have people over here to fuss about one bullet? Think of ourboys in the trenches."
After a time she looked up suddenly and said: "It didn't go anywherenear the baby, I suppose?"
We said it had not, and she then observed that the building was a mereshell, and that people with small children should raise them in thecountry anyhow.
It was during dinner--Tish had been reading Horace Fletcher for sometime, and meals lasted almost from one to the next--that Hannah came inand said the janitor wanted to see Tish. She went out and came backsomewhat later, looking as irritated as our dear Tish ever looks, andgot her pocketbook from behind the china closet and went out again.
"I expected as much," Hannah said. Hannah is Tish's maid. "She's payingblackmail. Like as not that janitor will collect a hundred dollars fromher, and that phonograph never cost more than thirty-five. They'repaying for it on the installment plan, and the man only gets a dollar aweek."
"Hannah," I said sharply, "if you mean to insinuate----"
"Me?" Hannah replied in a hurt tone. "I don't insinuate anything. If Iwas called tomorrow before a judge and jury I'd say that for all I knowMiss Tish was reading the _Banner_ all morning. But I'd pray theywouldn't take a trip here and look in the upper right-hand sideboarddrawer."
She then went out and slammed the door.
Aggie and I make it a point of honor never to pry into Tish's secrets,so we did not, of course, look into the drawer. However, a moment laterI happened to upset my glass of water and naturally went to thesideboard drawer in que
stion for a fresh napkin. And Tish's revolver waslying underneath her best monogrammed tray cover.
"It's there, Aggie," I said. "Her revolver. She's practicing again; andyou know what that means--war."
Aggie gave a low moan.
"I wish we'd let her get that aeroplane. She might have been satisfied,Lizzie," she said in a shaken voice.
"She might have been dead too," I replied witheringly.
And then Tish came back. She said nothing about the Andersons; but lateron when the baby started to cry she observed rather bitterly that shedidn't see why people had to have a phonograph when they had that, andthat personally she felt that whoever destroyed that phonograph shouldhave a vote