JUST A MONTH LATER Tish telephoned one morning for Aggie and myself to go there that afternoon. There was a touch of sharpness in her manner, which with Tish usually means nervous tension.
“And put on something decent, for once,” she said. “There’s no need to look as though you were taking your old clothes for an airing, to keep out the moths.”
Tish was alone when we arrived. I could smell sponge cakes baking, and Tish had put on her mother’s onyx set and was sitting with her back to the light. She looked slightly feverish, and I commented on it, but she only said that she had been near the stove.
When she was called out, however, Aggie leaned over to me.
“Stove, nothing!” she said. “She’s painted her face! And she’s got a new transformation!” Had Charlie Sands himself appeared wearing a toupee we could not have been more astounded. And our amazement continued when Hannah brought in a tea tray with the Carberry silver on it, silver which had been in a safe-deposit vault for twenty years.
“Hannah,” I demanded, “what is the matter?”
“She’s going to be married! That’s what,” said Hannah, putting down the tray with a slam. “No fool like an old fool!” Then she burst into tears. “She spent the whole morning in a beauty parlor,” she wailed. “Look at her finger nails! And callin’ me in to draw up her corset on her!” Neither Aggie nor I could speak for a moment. As I have said, our dear Tish had never shown any interest in the other sex. Indeed, I think I may say that Tish’s virginity of outlook regarding herself is her strongest characteristic. It is her proud boast that no man has ever offered her the most chaste of salutes, and her simple statement as to what would happen if one did has always been a model of firmness.
I have heard her remark that when the late Henry Clay observed “Give me liberty or give me death,” he was referring to marriage.
But Aggie had been correct. There was a bloom on dear Tish’s face never placed there by the benign hand of Nature. Had I seen Mr. Ostermaier, our minister, preaching a sermon in a silk hat I should not have felt more horrified. And our anxiety was not lessened by Tish’s first remark when she returned.
“I shall want you two as witnesses,” she said. “And I shall make just one remark now. I know your attitude on certain subjects, so I ask you simply to remember this: I believe we owe a duty to the nation, especially with regard to children.”
“Good heavens, Tish!” Aggie said, and turned a sort of greenish white. “A woman of your age—”
“What’s my age got to do with it?” Tish snapped. “I simply say—”
But just then the doorbell rang, and Hannah announced a gentleman.
It was a Mr. Stein.
Aggie has told me since that the thought of Tish marrying was as nothing to her then, compared with the belief that she was marrying out of the Presbyterian Church. And she knew the moment she saw him that Mr. Stein was not a Presbyterian. But as it developed and as all the world knows now, it was not a matter of marriage at all.
Mr. Stein was the well-known moving-picture producer.
While Aggie and I were endeavoring to readjust our ideas he sat down, and looked at Tish while rubbing his hands together.
“Well, Miss Carberry,” he said, “I’ve brought the contracts.”
“And the advance?” Tish inquired calmly.
“And the advance. Certified check, as you requested.”
“You approve of my idea?”
“Well,” he said, “you’re right in one way. Sex has been overdone in pictures. The censors have killed it. When you’re limited to a five-foot kiss—well, you know. You can’t get it over, that’s all. We’ve had to fall back on adventure. Not even crime, at that. Would you believe it, we’ve had to change a murder scene just lately to the corpse taking an overdose of sleeping medicine by mistake. And we can’t have a woman show her figure on a chaise longue in a tea gown, while the bathing-suit people get by without any trouble. It’s criminal, that’s all. Criminal!”
“You have missed my idea,” Tish said coldly. “I wrote that picture to prove that a love interest, any love interest, is not essential to a picture.”
He agreed with what we now realize was suspicious alacrity.
“Certainly,” he said. “Certainly! After all, who pays the profits on pictures? The women, Miss Carberry. The women! Do up the dishes in a hurry—get me?—and beat it for the theater. Like to sit there and imagine themselves the heroine. And up to now we’ve never given them a heroine over seventeen years of age!”
He reflected on this, almost tearfully.
“Well,” he said, “that’s over now. There are twenty-nine million women over forty in America to-day, and everyone will see this picture. That is, if we do it.”
“If you do it?” Tish inquired, gazing at him through her spectacles.
“When I told the casting director to find me a woman for the part he went out and got drunk. He’s hardly been sober since.”
“You haven’t found anyone?”
“Not yet.”
Tish had picked up her knitting, and Mr. Stein sat back and surveyed her for a few moments in silence. Then he leaned forward.
“Excuse me for asking, Miss Carberry,” he said, “but have you ever driven a car?”
“I drove an ambulance in France.”
“Really?” He seemed interested and slightly excited. “Then the sound of a gun wouldn’t scare you, I dare say?”
“I would hardly say that. I shoot very well. I’m considered rather good with a machine gun, I believe.”
He sat forward on the edge of his chair, and stared at her.
“Ever ride a horse?” he inquired. “Not hard, you know, with a Western saddle. You just sit in it and the horse does the rest.”
Tish looked at him through her spectacles.
“There is no argument for the Western saddle as against the English,” she said firmly. “I have used them both, Mr. Stein. One rides properly by balance, not adherence.”
Mr. Stein suddenly got out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.
“Would you believe it!” he muttered. “And me just happening to be in town on a little matter of alimony! Does everything! By heaven, I believe she could fill a tooth!”
He then stared again at Tish and said, “You’re not by any chance related to the Miss Carberry who captured the town of X— from the Germans, I suppose?”
“My friends here, and I, did that; yes.”
He stared at us all without saying anything for a moment. Then he moistened his lips.
“Well, well!” he said. “Well, well! Why, we ran a shot of you, Miss Carberry, in our news feature, when you were decorated and kissed by that French general, What’s-His-Name.”
“I prefer not to recall that.”
“Surely, surely,” he agreed. He then got up and bowed to Tish. “Miss Carberry,” he said, “I apologize, and I salute you. I came here to offer you a fixed price for your story. A moment ago I decided to offer you the part of the woman of—er—maturity in your picture, with two hundred dollars a week and a double for the stunts. I now remove the double, and offered you a thousand a week for your first picture. If that goes, we’ll talk business.”
If Tish reads this I will ask her at this moment to pause and think. Did I or did I not enter a protest? Did Aggie warn her or did she not? And was it not Tish herself who silenced us with a gesture, and completed her arrangements while Aggie softly wept?
She cannot deny it.
One final word of Tish’s I must record, in fairness to her.
“If I do this, Mr. Stein,” she said, “there must be a clear understanding. This is purely a picture of adventure and is to teach a real moral lesson.”
“Absolutely,” Mr. Stein said heartily. “Virtue is always triumphant on the screen. It is our greatest commercial asset. Without it, ladies, we would be nowhere.”
“And there must be no love element introduced.”
“Certainly not,” said Mr. Stein. “Certainly not!”
Those were almost his final words. We then had tea, and Tish gave him some of our homemade blackberry cordial. He seemed very pleased with it, and on departing remarked, “My admiration for you grows steadily, Miss Carberry. I did not fully estimate your powers when I said you could fill a tooth. You could, with that cordial, make a ouija board hiccup.”