Aggie under the same circ.u.mstances follows her heart. As for me, I generally follow Tish and Aggie, and they"ve led me into some curious places.
This is really a sort of apology, because, whereas usually Tish leads off and we follow her, in the adventure of the Simple Life we were all equally guilty. Tish made the suggestion, but we needed no urging. As you know, this summer two years ago was a fairly good one, as summers go,--plenty of fair weather, only two or three really hot spells, and not a great deal of rain. Charlie Sands, Tish"s nephew, went over to England in June to report the visit of the French President to London for his newspaper, and Tish"s automobile had been sent to the factory to be gone over. She had been teaching Aggie to drive it, and owing to Aggie"s thinking she had her foot on the brake when it was really on the gas, they had leaped a four-foot ditch and gone down into a deep ravine, from which both Tish and Aggie had had to be pulled up with ropes.
Well, with no machine and Charlie Sands away, we hardly knew how to plan the summer. Tish thought at first she would stay at home and learn to ride. She thought her liver needed stirring up. She used to ride, she said, and it was like sitting in a rocking-chair, only perhaps more so.
Aggie and I went out to her first lesson; but when I found she had bought a divided skirt and was going to try a man"s saddle, I could not restrain my indignation.
"I"m going, Tish," I said firmly, when she had come out of the dressing-room and I realized the situation. "I shan"t attempt to restrain you, but I shall not remain to witness your shame."
Tish eyed me coldly. "When you wish to lecture me," she snapped, "about revealing to the public that I have two legs, if I do wear a skirt, don"t stand in a sunny doorway in that linen dress of yours. I am going to ride; every woman should ride. It"s good for the liver."
I think she rather wavered when they brought the horse, which looked larger than usual and had a Roman nose. The instructor handed Tish four lines and she grabbed them nervously in a bunch.
"Just a moment!" said the instructor, and slipped a line between each two of her fingers.
Tish looked rather startled. "When I used to ride--" she began with dignity.
But the instructor only smiled. "These two are for the curb," he said--"if he bolts or anything like that, you know. Whoa, Viper! Still, old man!"
"Viper!" Tish repeated, clutching at the lines. "Is--is he--er--nasty?"
"Not a bit of it," said the instructor, while he prepared to hoist her up. "He"s as gentle as a woman to the people he likes. His only fault is that he"s apt to take a little nip out of the stablemen now and then.
He"s very fond of ladies."
"Humph!" said Tish. "He"s looking at me rather strangely, don"t you think? Has he been fed lately?"
"Perhaps he sees that divided skirt," I suggested.
Tish gave me one look and got on the horse. They walked round the ring at first and Tish seemed to like it. Then a stableman put a nickel into a player-piano and that seemed to be a signal for the thing to trot.
Tish said afterward that she never hit the horse"s back twice in the same place. Once, she says, she came down on his neck, and several times she was back somewhere about his tail. Every time she landed, wherever it might be, he gave a heave and sent her up again. She tried to say "Whoa," but it came out in pieces, so to speak, and the creature seemed to be encouraged by it and took to going faster. By that time, she said, she wasn"t coming down at all, but was in the air all the time, with the horse coming up at the rate of fifty revolutions a second. She had presence of mind enough to keep her mouth shut so she wouldn"t bite her tongue off.
After four times round the music stopped and the horse did also. They were just in front of us, and Tish looked rather dazed.
"You did splendidly!" said Aggie. "Honestly, Tish, I was frightened at first, but you and that dear horse seemed one piece. Didn"t they, Lizzie?"
Tish straightened out the fingers of her left hand with her right and extricated the lines. Then she turned her head slowly from right to left to see if she could.
"Help me down, somebody," she said in a thin voice, "and call an osteopath. There is something wrong with my spine!"
She was in bed three days, having ma.s.sage and a vibrator and being rubbed with chloroform liniment. At the end of that time she offered me her divided skirt, but I refused.
"Riding would be good for your liver, Lizzie," she said, sitting up in bed with pillows all about her.
"I don"t intend to detach it to do it good," I retorted. "What your liver and mine and most of the other livers need these days isn"t to be sent out in a divided skirt and beaten to a jelly: they need rest--less food and simpler food. If instead of taking your liver on a horse you"d put it in a tent and feed it nuts and berries, you wouldn"t be the color you are to-day, Tish Carberry."
That really started the whole thing, although at the time Tish said nothing. She has a way of getting an idea and letting it simmer on the back of her brain, as you may say, when n.o.body knows it"s been cooking at all, and then suddenly bringing it out cooked and seasoned and ready to serve.
On the day Tish sat up for the first time, Aggie and I went over to see her. Hannah, the maid, had got her out of bed to a window, and Tish was sitting there with books all about her. It is in times of enforced physical idleness that most of Tish"s ideas come to her, and Aggie had reminded me of that fact on the way over.
"You remember, Lizzie," she said, "how last winter when she was getting over the grippe she took up that correspondence-school course in swimming. She"s reading, watch her books. It"ll probably be suffrage or airships."
Tish always believes anything she reads. She had been quite sure she could swim after six correspondence lessons. She had all the movements exactly, and had worried her trained nurse almost into hysteria for a week by turning on her face in bed every now and then and trying the overhand stroke. She got very expert, and had decided she"d swim regularly, and even had Charlie Sands show her the Australian crawl business so she could go over some time and swim the Channel. It was a matter of breathing and of changing positions, she said, and was up to intelligence rather than muscle.
Then when she was quite strong, she had gone to the natatorium. Aggie and I went along, not that we were any good in emergency, but because Tish had convinced us there would be no emergency. And Tish went in at the deep end of the pool, head first, according to diagram, and _did not come up_.
Well, there seemed to be nothing threatening in what Tish was reading this time. She had ordered some books for Maria Lee"s children and was looking them over before she sent them. The "Young Woods-man" was one and "Camper Craft" was another. How I shudder when I recall those names!
Aggie had baked an angel cake and I had brought over a jar of cookies.
But Tish only thanked us and asked Hannah to take them out. Even then we were not suspicious. Tish sat back among her pillows and said very little. The conversation was something like this:--
_Aggie_: Well, you"re up again: I hope to goodness it will be a lesson to you. If you don"t mind, I"d like Hannah to cut that cake. It fell in the middle.
_Tish_: Do you know that the Indians never sweetened their food and that they developed absolutely perfect teeth?
_Aggie_: Well, they never had any automobiles either, but they didn"t develop wings.
_Lizzie_: Don"t you want that window closed? I"m in a draft.
_Tish_: Air in motion never gave any one a cold. We do not catch cold; we catch heat. It"s ridiculous the way we shut ourselves up in houses and expect to remain well.
_Aggie_: Well, I"b catchig sobethig.
_Lizzie_ (_changing the subject_): Would you like me to help you dress?
It might rest your back to have your corset on.
_Tish_ (_firmly_): I shall never wear a corset again.
_Aggie_ (_sneezing_): Why? Didn"t the Iddiads wear theb?
Tish is very sensitive to lack of sympathy and she shut up like a clam.
She was coldly polite to us for the remainder of our visit, but she did not again refer to the Indians, which in itself was suspicious.
Fortunately for us, or unfortunately, Tish"s new scheme was one she could not very well carry out alone. I believe she tried to induce Hannah to go with her, and only when Hannah failed her did she turn to us. Hannah was frightened and came to warn us.
I remember the occasion very well. It was Mr. Wiggins"s birthday anniversary, and we usually dine at Aggie"s and have a cake with thirty candles on it. Tish was not yet able to be about, so Aggie and I ate together. She always likes to sit until the last candle is burned out, which is rather dispiriting and always leaves me low in my mind.
Just as it flickered and went out, Hannah came in.
"Miss Tish sent over Mr. Charlie"s letter from London," said Hannah, and put it in front of Aggie. Then she sat down on a chair and commenced to cry.
"Why, Hannah!" said Aggie. "What in the world has happened?"
"She"s off again!" sniveled Hannah; "and she"s worse this time than she"s ever been. No sugar, no tea, only nuts and fruit, and her windows open all night, with the curtains getting black. I wisht I had Mr. Charlie by the neck."
I suppose it came over both of us at the same time--the "Young Woodsman," and the "Camper Craft," and no stays, and all that. I reached for Charlie Sands"s letter, which was always sent to Tish and meant for all of us. He wrote:--
_Dear Three of a Kind_: Well, the French President has came and went, and London has taken down all the brilliant flags which greeted him, such tactful bits as bore Cressy and Agincourt, and the pretty little smallpox and "plague here" banners, and has gone back to such innocent diversions as baiting cabinet ministers, blowing up public buildings, or going out into the woods seeking the Simple Life.
The Simple Lifers travel in bands--and little else. They go barefooted, barearmed, bareheaded and barenecked. They wear one garment, I believe, let their hair hang and their beards grow, eat only what Nature provides, such as nuts and fruits, sleep under the stars, and drink from Nature"s pools. Rather bully, isn"t it? They"re a handsome lot generally, brown as nuts. And I saw a girl yesterday--well, if you do not hear from me for a time it will be because I have discarded the pockets in which I carry my fountain pen and my stamps and am wandering barefoot through the Elysian fields.