WE DID NOT GO to the farm at once. Aggie had taken a heavy cold, due to scant apparel that night and to three or four baths every day for some time following. But the incident of the bandit and the lantern led to an unforeseen experience in the interval.
We were taking an evening drive to get some eggs from Jeremiah Tibbs, the caretaker at the farm, when we again saw a man waving a red lantern. This time, however, Tish did not stop. She stepped hard on the gas instead; the next instant there was a most terrible crash, and we went entirely through the side of a house that was being moved and which practically filled the road.
There was a complete and dreadful silence for a moment. Then the plaster dust began to settle and I could see where we were. We were inside the building, with the top of the car gone, but no other injuries; and a tall, nice-looking young man who had been frying bacon over a stove by the light of a candle was gazing at us with surprise.
“Well!” he said. “Welcome to our city! There is a door, but maybe you didn’t notice it.”
There was quite an excitement for a while; the man on the tractor which was pulling the building stating that the bump had broken his nose, and the man with the lantern stating that Tish had tried to run over him. In the end, however, matters quieted, although it required some time to extricate us, and I must say the young man behaved beautifully. He cooked us some more bacon while our car was being extricated, and, after coffee and a taste of the cordial which we always carry, even became quite talkative.
He was, he said, a writer by profession, and, as such, liked to carry his house with him.
“Matter of convenience,” he said pleasantly. “Toothbrush always where it ought to be, and so on. The lowly turtle lives like that and seems to like it. Just now I got tired of where I was; same creek, same cows eating the geraniums—you get the idea, of course. So I decided to change the view. It’s really very simple when you know how. The only drawback is that traveling in this manner is monotonous. The landscape changes too slowly.”
Well, we were all pleased with him, and glad to find that he had rented a piece of meadow just below Tish’s farm. He said his name was Bellamy, and seemed disappointed when we had never heard of him. He smiled, however, and merely observed that such is fame.
I thought Tish was rather thoughtful when at last we left, and it was some minutes before she spoke. Then she said grimly:
“Business must be good! At least he has bought a house.”
“Some writers make money, Tish,” I observed.
“Writer!” she said scornfully. “He is no writer. Lizzie, that is our bandit.”
I must say I was shocked. But Tish is seldom wrong, and I had to admit that it was possible. Nor were our anxieties allayed when, on finally moving to the farm some days later, we saw that the moving house was firmly settled by the road where our lane entered it, and that the Bellamy man himself was sitting on the doorstep and waved to us.
There is also no doubt in my mind that the second incident that night contributed to our later misfortunes; for, on driving into the barnyard, a surprising sight met our eyes. The yard was filled with trucks, and from every one of them was coming such a squealing as I, for one, had never heard before. We were completely mystified, until at last the explanation came to us. They were pigs. There seemed to be hundreds of them, and as well as we could make out, the men were taking them out of the trucks and putting them into the empty sties, the barn, and even the fields. I shall never forget Jeremiah’s face when he saw us.
“I thought you were coming next week,” he said. “About these pigs now—”
“What about these pigs?” said Tish coldly.
“Well, it’s like this, Miss Carberry,” he said. “My brother’s got a lot of pigs to ship to market, and it’s a long haul. He asked if he could stop them here overnight and tomorrow, and I said he could. You see, a hog, he can stand just so much. Then he’s got to have rest and food, like any other creature. Some people call them just hogs, but they’ve got feelings, Miss Carberry. They’ve got feelings.”
This is the explanation of what followed, for the next afternoon a polite gentleman in a government car drove up, and we saw that Jeremiah tried to head him off from us; but after he had looked over the pigs and apparently tried to count them, he came up to the porch and asked Tish if she intended to keep all of them.
“Certainly not,” she said. “I detest the creatures.”
He looked rather surprised, but he smiled politely, and after Tish had told him that there wouldn’t be a hog on the place by the next day, he went away.
Late that night we heard a number of trucks drive in, and by the squealing we gathered that Jeremiah’s brother had come for his livestock. Not until long afterward did we discover that those hogs were being driven around the country at night just one jump ahead of the government inspector, and I take this occasion to state that any money Tish received from Washington as a result of that incident went at once to charity. But it is my opinion that Jeremiah Tibbs hated us from that time, and that it was he who got us into the trouble later on.
Well, we more or less settled down after that, although Hannah hated the place from the start. One rainy day I found her on the back porch, putting on her raincoat and overshoes and picking up her umbrella, and when she saw me she burst into tears.
We persuaded her to stay, however; and then, only a morning or two later, we saw the redheaded girl again. She stood for a time looking over a fence at us as we sat on the porch, knitting, and then leaped it like a boy and came up to us.
“Hello!” she said. “Welcome to the rural districts. How’s the hog business?”
I must say she was pretty enough, if she did look like a forest fire; and if she had on anything but a pair of overalls and a green shirt, it was not noticeable. Tish asked her to sit down, so she perched on the edge of the porch and fished for a cigarette and matches.
“That’s the advantage of pants,” she said. “They’ve got pockets.”
Then Aggie asked her if she had been troubled by the bandit lately, and she looked as nearly savage as a pretty girl can look.
“Troubled!” she said. “If that subnormal thinks he can trouble me, he’d better think again.”
She said her name was Lelia Vaughn, and asked us earnestly if we thought she would be a good type for moving pictures. But outside of the fact that she was staying at one of the big houses below she gave no information.
As to the night she had met the bandit she was very reticent; merely observing that if she had a weapon she would shoot him on sight.
I must say we liked her. She had green eyes and a way of looking lonely and pathetic that touched all our hearts. And after that first call she came often. She even let Tish show her how to knit, although I must say the results were pretty terrible.
Then one morning, after she had had some cookies and a small glass of our cordial, she opened up and told us her tragic story.
“When I look at your kind faces,” she said, “I feel that I can confide in you, and I must talk to somebody or go mad.” Here she ate another cookie, and then resumed: “I know it will sound incredible. I know that I appear to be free as the air. But it is not true. Actually, I am a prisoner.”
I recall that we all put down our knitting and stared at her.
“A prisoner!” Tish said. “What sort of prisoner?”
“For love,” she said in a low voice. “I have been sent here so that I cannot see or communicate with the man I care for. And if you don’t believe it, you might look down and see if there is a heavy-set creature who is an ex-prize fighter leaning against a fence somewhere.”
There was! Far below, a man whom we had never seen before was smoking a pipe and staring in our direction, and Lelia gave a slow sad smile and went on.
“That gorilla,” she said, “is my day jailer, and the man who shot at me is on duty at night. They have even taken away my car. “You are,” she said tragically, “the only friends I have left in the world.”
I shall never forget Tish’s expression as she put down her knitting, or the tears in Aggie’s eyes. Aggie had had a frustrated love affair of her own in early life, and ever since has been sympathetic with lovers. And Lelia must have seen our faces, for after that she told us her story. She was, she said, madly in love with a young man in the city whom she called Eddie—she never gave him any other name—and we gathered that he was also in love with her.
“But he is poor,” she added dejectedly. “You know how it is these days. And my people have someone else in view. He is bald-headed and has a tummy, but he has plenty of money. So I am sent here, as my father puts it, to get my senses back.”
Here she suddenly fumbled for a not-very-clean handkerchief and held it to her eyes.
“I’ll never do it,” she said. “Never. Let them starve me. Let them beat me. Let them lock me up. Can you imagine me marrying a man named Theodore, and having little Theodores all over the place?”
“It is incredible,” Tish said slowly. “Such abuse of power in this day and generation! How old are you?”
Well, it seemed that she was nineteen, and that in two years she would inherit quite a lot of money from somebody; but what she wanted, she said, was to get her money now, so that she could marry Eddie at once and they could go west, probably to Hollywood, and start life all over again.
I must admit that we were profoundly touched. Aggie, indeed, was weeping, and when Lelia had at last made a dejected departure, I saw Tish watching her as she crossed the fields.
“I came here for rest and peace,” she said, “but injustice is injustice anywhere. If that story is true and the child is indeed a prisoner, something should be done. And soon.”
I have quoted her exactly, as the press has never published a withdrawal of many of the entirely false statements made at the time. Our entire intention was to prevent a grave miscarriage of justice; and although I object to strong language, anyone who says that we knew what was in that bag as it fell from the sky lies in his teeth.