Three Pirates of Penzance

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Three Pirates of Penzance

The Story of an automobile, a Red-Haired Man and a Bureau

By Mary Roberts Rinehart

II

BOTH Aggie and I had objected when Tish talked of buying an automobile. But the more you talk against a thing to Tish the more she wants it. It was just the same the time her niece, Maria Lee, went to Europe for the whole summer and offered Tish her motor boat. Aggie and I protested, but the boat came, and Tish had a lesson or two and sent to town for a yachting cap. Then, one day when we were making elderberry jelly and ran out of sugar, Tish offered to take me to the mainland in the boat. That was the time, you remember, when the stopping lever got jammed, and Tish and I circled around Lake Penzance for seven hours, with people on different docks trying to lasso us with ropes as we flew past, and Aggie in hysterics on the beach below the cottage.

People of Penzance still speak of that day, for we figured out that we had enough gasoline to run one hundred and sixty miles, and after Peter Miller, at Point Lena, had lassoed us and was dragged for a quarter of a mile before he caught hold of a buoy and could let go of the rope, we got desperate. I was at the wheel and Tish was trying to stop the engine, pouring water over it and attempting to stick an iron rod in the wheels. And just as she succeeded, and the rod shot through the awning on the top of the launch like a skyrocket, I turned the thing toward shore, where it looked fairly flat.

"I'm going to get to land," I said with my teeth clenched. "I don't care if it crawls up and dies in a plowed field; I'm going to get my feet on dry land again."

I had not expected it to stop so suddenly, but it did, and Tish and I and the granulated sugar landed some distance ahead of the boat and well above high-water mark; in fact, Tish broke her collarbone, and that entire summer, whenever the doctor had to peel off the adhesive plaster, Tish would get ugly and turn on me.

Well, we should have known about the automobile. I had a queer feeling when I started out that morning. Tish had had the car out the day before by herself for the first time—both Aggie and I had had the good judgment to refuse—and she got home safely, although she had a queer-looking mark on her right cheek, and one of the mud-guards didn't look exactly right. She said she had had a lovely ride, and we helped her push the machine into the wash-house, where we had had Carpenter knock out a side, and then she went to bed and had a cup of tea. Aggie heard something moving that night, and she found Tish sitting up on the side of her bed, holding like death to the back of a chair and turning it around like a wheel. Aggie got her back to bed, but Tish only looked up at her and said:

"Four chickens!" and went to sleep again.

The next morning her left leg was quite stiff from what she called the clutch, and she sat on the porch peacefully and rocked. But at noon she went to the wash-house, and when she came back she was pale but determined.

"I'm going to take it out," she said solemnly. "If I don't I'll forget everything I've learned. Besides, we've been coming here every summer for ten years, and there are plenty of places we have never seen."

Aggie looked at me, but we knew it would have to come some time, and so we all went in and tied up our heads.

"We needn't go fast," Aggie said when she was putting on her bonnet. "We have all afternoon, and one doesn't really enjoy the scenery unless one goes very slowly."

Tish's face was pallid but resolved.

"It's a great deal easier to go fast than slow," she remarked. "I haven't quite got the hang of going slow. But there's one comfort about going fast: you get around much quicker."

At the foot of the stairs she stopped and called up. "I'm going to take a tablespoonful of blackberry wine," she said. "I feel chilly in the small of my back."

Aggie and I didn't say anything, but we each took a tablespoonful of blackberry wine also.

Tish had written out a list of things to do to start the car, such as "Turn A," "Push forward B," and so on. And she had pasted bits of paper marked A and B on the levers and plugs. So I read:

"Turn A; push up B, crank, and release C."

It started nicely.

"Just one thing," Tish said over her shoulder as we passed the Ostermaier cottage, and they waved to us from the porch: "Don't scream in my ears; don't lean over and clutch me around the neck; and if we run over anything try to look as if you didn't know we had."

Luckily she had not noticed my traveling bag. After the affair of the launch I was prepared for anything, and I had packed up three nightgowns, a balsam pillow, a roll of bandage, a bottle of arnica, a cake of soap, my sewing box and a prayer-book. Aggie had some sandwiches; so we felt we were prepared for everything, from sudden death to losing a button.

We got on to the ferry safely enough. Carpenter, who runs the cable drum of the ferry with a gas engine, examined the machine with a great deal of interest on the way over.

"It's a pretty hot day, Miss Tish," he called as we were starting off the boat. "You'll have to watch her; she'll boil."

Tish looked worried, but she said nothing.

"What is there to boil?" Aggie whispered to me.

"The gasoline," I told her; "and if it boils it'll explode. I'm no mechanic, but I know that much."

After a few minutes Aggie leaned forward.

"Tish," she said.

"Don't take my mind off this machine!" Tish shouted back. "Isn't that a buggy coming?"

"It's too far off to see. It's either a buggy or a wagon," I said. "Tish, where's the gasoline tank?"

But Tish wasn't listening. "Why doesn't that man turn out? Does he want the whole road?" she snapped. There was a silence while we neared the buggy ahead. Then Tish leaned over and began jerking at levers.

"I can't stop the thing," she gasped; "and there isn't room to pass!"

There wasn't time to pray. I saw Aggie shut her eyes, and the next moment there was a terrific jar. Aggie and I were flung together in a corner of the seat, a man yelled, and the next minute we had leaped out of the ditch again and were going smoothly along the road. I glanced behind. The man had halted his horse and was standing up in the buggy, staring after us.

"I didn't think I could do it," said Tish complacently.

"Only the glory of God took you into that ditch and out again, Tish Carberry," I snapped. "And if you are going to do any more circus performances I want to get out."

She could stop the car well enough when there was no crying need to, and now, to our alarm, she stopped every now and then and got out and held her hand over the front of the machine, like testing the oven for cake. Finally she said:

"It's boiling!"

Aggie got ready to jump.

"It'll explode, won't it?" she quavered.

"I don't see why it should explode," Tish replied, wetting her finger to see if it sizzled when she touched it. "But it's hot enough, in all conscience. A good rain would cool it."

The sun was blazing down on us, however, and there was no sign of rain. I said I would just as soon be blown up as melted down, and we got in again. The machine would not start. We all took a turn at the handle in front, but it was like winding a clock with a broken spring.

That is where the man and the girl and the little Pomeranian dog enter the story. For they came along in a blue runabout car just as Tish threw her book called Automobile Troubles over the fence and said she was going to walk home. The book said, "Beginners having trouble with their engines should look under the headings Ignition, Carburation, Lubrication, Compression, Circulation and Timing." As Tish remarked, the only one that was understandable was Circulation, and anybody could tell without a book that the car wasn't circulating to any extent.

Just as Tish threw the book away the young man in the blue runabout stopped and got out.

"In trouble?" he asked. "Can I do anything for you?"

"It was boiling," said Tish. "I suppose something has melted inside."

"Oh, I think not." He looked at the car, pushed something, went round and turned the handle—crank, Tish called it, and it's a good name—and the engine started.

"You didn't have your gas on," said the young man. "And don't worry; you're sure to heat up on a day like this, but nothing will melt."

"Or explode?" asked Aggie.

"Or explode."

He looked at the girl and smiled, and when we started off they were still there, watching us. The dog yelped, and the girl smiled and waved her hand. Aggie, who is farsighted, turned around a second time. "He reminds me of Mr. Simmons," she said with a sigh, still looking back. Aggie was engaged years ago to a young man in the roofing business, who fell off a roof.

After a minute, "He's kissing her!" she gasped. After that she nearly broke her neck watching them out of sight. Aggie is romantic. I turned around, but I had on my near glasses.

I don't know how we lost the Noblestown Pike. Tish blamed it on having to drive with one eye shut, on account of something getting into the other. Aggie's nose was sunburned and swelling, and I would have given a good bit for something heavy in my lap to anchor me. When I was a girl I rode horseback, and with any kind of a steady horse you can tell when the next jolt is coming; but Tish's machine has a way of coming up and hitting you when you are off guard, so to speak.

To go back, after an hour or so we found we were on the wrong road. It kept growing narrower, and when at last it became only a dusty country lane Tish realized it herself. There was a rickety farmhouse about two hundred feet from the road, with a woman bending over a washtub outside the door. I stood up and made a megaphone of my hands.

"Which way to the Noblestown Pike?" I yelled, while Tish got out and stuck a wet finger on the hood over the engine.

The woman looked up and pointed sullenly in the direction from which we had come. We looked at the road. There wasn't a spot to turn—not another road in sight to back into. It was hotter than ever. The engine hummed like a teakettle on a hot stove, and there were little clouds of blue smoke coming from somewhere or other about it. Aggie said she thought the gasoline tank was on fire.

"If it is you'll soon know it," said Tish grimly. "It's under the seat. I'm going to back up on to this bridge business over the gutter. I think I can make it."

"Do you know how to back up?" I asked; and just at that minute the woman left her tub and started to run down the walk.

"Ninety-Five Degrees of Heat, Seven Inches of Dust, Five Miles to a Telephone and Ten Miles to Town. With an Automobile Sittin' Down in Your Front Yard—That's All the Hell I Want"

Tish backed. With an awful grinding of wheels she got the right lever finally; the machine gave a jerk that would have decapitated a chicken, and we backed slowly on to the timbers that bridged the gutter and made a road toward the house. When it gave the first crack we shouted—Aggie and I. It might not have been too late, but Tish put on the emergency brake by mistake and for a minute we hung on the verge. Then we began to settle. We went down slowly, with Tish above us and rising; and when we stopped, there we were, Aggie and I and the rear of the machine, a good four feet below Tish and the engine, with something grinding like mad and clouds of smoke everywhere.

When we crawled out the woman who owned the bridge was standing on the bank looking down at us, and her face was something awful.

"You'll fix that bridge before you leave!" she said, shutting her mouth hard on the last word.

"You'll fix that automobile before I'm through with you!" said Tish, pointing at the thing, which looked like a horse sitting down in a gutter.

"Oh, rats!" the woman said rudely. "That's four of them things that's gone through that bridge this week, and I'm good and sick of it. Ain't there any other bridges in Chester County?"

"Not like that," retorted Tish, eying the ruins. "You don't call that a bridge, do you?"

"It was," said the woman.

She came forward and a ferocious-looking dog stepped from behind her.

Tish looked at the dog.

"It wasn't much of a bridge," she said, more politely. "If you've got any men on the place I'll give them a dollar apiece to get my machine out of there."

"No men around," said the woman shortly. "Theodore"—to the dog—"don't you go around bitin' until I give you the word. Sit down."

The dog sat down.

"Before you leave," she said to Tish, "you'll mend that bridge or I'll know the reason why. Meantime your automobile is trespassin', and the fine is twenty dollars."

Then she sat down on the bank and began to tickle the dog's ears with a blade of grass.

"Theodore," she said, "if them three old maids think they can bluff us, they don't know us, do they?"

I had stood about as much as I could, so I walked around in front of her and glared at her.

"I wouldn't sit so close to the automobile if I were you," I remarked emphatically. "Something is likely to explode."

"I feel like it," she said. "When I get mad I'm good an' mad. Anyhow, I own this place, and I'll sit where I please. Theodore, let's put the washing-machine on wheels and go round the country bustin' down folks' bridges and playin' hell generally!"

An oath always rouses Tish. She got the engine stopped. Then she came around beside me with her goggles shoved up on her forehead.

"Woman," she said sternly, "how dare you mention the place of punishment so lightly!" Tish has been superintendent of a Sunday-school for thirty years.

The woman stared at her. Then she got up slowly.

"I wasn't alludin' to the next world," she said bitterly. "Ninety-five degrees of heat, seven inches of dust, five miles to a telephone and ten miles to town, with an automobile sittin' down in your front yard—that's all the hell I want."

Then she walked up the path. We stared after her; between her shoulder-blades her blue wrapper was wet through with sweat, and the dog trailed at her heels. Aggie, who is always sentimental, took a step after her.

"I say," she called. "If we come back for you some nice afternoon will you let us take you for a ride?"

But she got no answer. To our amazement, the woman turned around at the top of the path and put her thumb to her nose!

We did not see her again for some time, but after Tish had climbed in twice and started the engine, to see if the car couldn't climb out—the only result being that it almost turned over backward—the woman appeared again. She carried a board that looked like a breadboard nailed to a broom-handle, and on it fresh ink, as if she had done it with her finger, were the words:

"Trespassing—fifty dollars."

"You said twenty before," I protested.

"That was for those little dinky, one-seated affairs," she said, jabbing the broom-handle into the dirt beside the road. "Two seats, forty dollars; two seats and a folded-back buggy-top, fifty." She adjusted the sign carefully, looked up and down the road, and then went back to the house.

So we sat down on the bank and Tish explained how she happened to do it. I am a Christian woman, and Aggie is so gentle that she has to scratch twice to light a match, but I must say we were bitter. We told Tish we didn't care how she happened to do it, and that some day she would be punished for a temper that made her throw away books that she would be sure to need some time; and that, anyhow, an unmarried woman of fifty has no business with an automobile.

"It's my belief," Tish retorted, "that she keeps her old bridge for that very purpose. She could make a good living off it, and all the work she'd have to do would be to build it up after every accident."

"Oh, no," Aggie said bitterly. "We are going to repair it, I believe."

The back of my neck began to smart from the sun and the dust eddied around us. A white hen came down the path, hopped on to the sloping step of the machine, perked its head at us, and then, with a squawk, flew up into Tish's seat behind the wheel. I was thirsty and my neck prickled.

Early in the afternoon we had a difference of opinion about who should walk the five miles to telephone for help, and after that we did not speak to each other. Tish talked to the machine and Aggie to the chicken. Every now and then Tish, after staring at the machine for a while, would get up and pick up the soundest of the bridge timbers, put it under the dropped end of the car and push with all her might.

"Call this a bridge?"—push—"Why, this is nothing"—push—"but a rotten old fence-rail!"—bang!—the timber broke. Tish stood with her back to us and kicked the pieces; then she turned on us. "As far as I'm concerned," she snapped, "the thing can sit there till it takes root. You're very much mistaken if you think I'm going to walk to that telephone, after bringing you out on a pleasure trip."

"Pleasure trip!" Aggie retorted. "I can get more pleasure out of a three-dollar rocking-chair. The next time you ask me to go on a pleasure trip, Tish Carberry, just push me off the porch backward. It's a good bit quicker."

By four o'clock I had a rash out all over my shoulders and chest, and my mouth was so full of dust that my teeth felt gritty. I had not cared particularly about going up to the house, but every few minutes between three and four the woman had come out, pumped some water, making a mighty splash, and gone back into the house again. It was more than human nature could stand. At a quarter after four o'clock I got up from the baked earth, glared at Tish, looked through Aggie, and walked with as much dignity as I could muster up the path to the well. There was a sign hung on it by a string around the nail in the top. It read, "Water, one dollar a tin. For automobiles, five dollars a bucket."

The woman came out and pumped some. The water ran cool and clear into a trough and then spread over the ground in dreadful waste. I could have lapped it up out of the trough; every bit of skin on me and lining membrane in me yelled "Water!" and—I had no money with me! The woman stood and waited, Theodore beside her.

"That's an outrage," I fumed. "How dare you put up such a sign! I—I shall report you!"

"Who to?" she asked indifferently. "I ain't askin' you to drink it, am I? It's my well, ain't it?"

"I'll send the money to you by mail." I had lost all my pride. "I'll come back and pay you."

"Cash in advance," said the creature; and pumping enough into a tin basin to have cooled me inside and out she put it down for the dog to drink!

III

I HAVE always felt that we did the right thing that night. It was all very well for Charlie Sands, Tish's nephew, when he heard the story, to say: "And they talk about giving women the vote! Why, for sense they would substitute sentiment; they would buy their opinions at the department stores along with their bargains, and a little two-penny love affair could upset the Government!"

Tish was raging.

"It does not matter whether you approve or not, Charlie," she said loftily, "as long as our consciences approve."

"Approve!" He nearly fell back out of his chair. "My dear ladies, you should every one have been jailed! As for conscience, I'd give a thousand dollars to have a conscience that would set the seal of its approval on assault and battery, highway robbery and abduction."

"The end justifies the means," I retorted; "and when did you get a conscience, Charlie Sands?"

"I think I've got the one Aunt Tish used to have," he said, and I got up and went into the house.

Well, I left the dog drinking. To go back, at that instant I happened to look at Tish, and she was standing on the bank waving her handkerchief at something in the road. I stepped to the corner of the house, and saw what it was—creeping along a lane we had not noticed was the blue runabout car. Creeping is the word. It would crawl forward a dozen feet and stop, and it kept on repeating the performance. But what puzzled me was a spot of pink, just in front of the car and moving slowly forward.

At the end of the lane the pink spot hesitated and then turned our way. Once beyond the hedge, it proved to be the girl with her pink motor veil. She was walking with her hands in the pockets of her ulster, and she was limping. About a dozen feet behind her, and stopping every now and then so as not to overtake her, came the runabout. It was very peculiar. The young man had his jaws set tight, and as he was staring at the girl, and as she was staring straight ahead, neither of them saw us on the bank just above their heads.

The girl—she was a very pretty girl, although streaky just then—had a tight grip on the Pomeranian. She had it tucked under her arm and it was wriggling and yelping to be free. Just after the blue machine had turned the corner the little beast got loose, and with a yelp he dashed to the car and into the empty seat.

The girl stopped. So did the car. She faced about and the young man looked over her head.

Suddenly the girl looked up and saw us, and with a quick glance she spied the lamps of Tish's machine around a curve. No one would have guessed from the front end of the thing that the rear had died in a gutter.

"Oh!" she said. "Oh, I'm so glad you're here! Are you going back to town?"

"We are not going anywhere," Tish said shortly, "unless your young man can help us."

"He is not my young man," the girl retorted, with distinctness; "but if there isn't very much the matter I dare say he can do something."

"I am not an automobile expert," he said, "but I dare say I can help a little, as, for instance, stuffing a puncture with rags until we get back to the city." The girl flushed. It was evidently a personal allusion."

"We haven't any rags," said Aggie, "and it isn't a puncture."

"There are two things we might do," said the young gentleman: "I might go to the nearest telephone and have help sent out from town, but as it's almost sunset it's pretty late for that; or, with a jack and a little help, we might fix it ourselves."

"A jack!" Tish said with scorn. "What kind of a jack—a bootjack or a jackass? I dare say they have them both at that farmhouse; I know they have one."

"A jack—a lever," explained the young man, beginning to work at the lock of the tool-box. "Where are you going—to Noblestown?"

"To the lake," I replied. Tish was fumbling for the keys to the machine which she kept in a pocket in her petticoat. "We have a summer cottage there."

"I'll make a bargain with you," he suggested. "The—the—er—young lady refuses to go back in my car. We—the fact is we have had a small difference of opinion; and—she insists on walking home. If I get your machine in shape will you take her to the city?"

We would have taken her anywhere short of a planet to get away ourselves, and that was how it began; for the young gentleman took off his coat and fell to work immediately. Once, when he had raised the car on the jack and Tish was holding the ends of the boards that he shoved under, while Aggie and I pushed, something gave way and the whole thing settled back with a jerk. Mr. Lewis—that was his name—lifted the broken fence-rails off Tish and helped her to her feet.

"There's something almost alive about automobiles occasionally," he said. "They are so blamed vicious."

"If it was alive," Tish gasped, hunting for her glasses, "I'd kill it." But it never occurred to her that she was going to drown it that very night!

By seven o'clock we had lifted the thing on five fence-rails and the breadboard sign, and Mr. Lewis announced it was now or never. The girl had not come near us. She had taken off her veil and smoothed up her hair, and was busy with a bit of a silver mirror. She was very pretty.

Mr. Lewis got into the car and put on the power. There was a terrible grinding, but nothing moved. From behind the three of us shoved, and Aggie said between gasps that if anything gave way her niece was to have her amethyst pin.

"Anne!" cried the young gentleman. But Miss Anne was powdering her nose and we all saw her turn it up.

"Anne!" called the young man who was not her young man, "you'll have to help here."

"Help yourself," said Anne coolly, and moistening her finger she proceeded to wipe the powder off her eyebrows.

Mr. Lewis shut off the engine, got out of the car and put on his coat. The girl did not turn her head, but she was watching through the mirror, for as he picked up his cap she rose lazily, put away her toilet things and started in our direction.

"What shall I do?" she asked Tish, ignoring him.

"Push," said Tish sharply—"unless you are too lame."

"My being lame won't matter, unless you wish me to kick the machine out," retorted the girl sweetly; and with that, the power being on, she put her brown arms against the car and her shoulder-muscles leaped up under her thin dress, and before I had planted my feet in the ditch the car rose, clung for a minute to the edge, and was over into the road. The girl said nothing. She looked at her hands, stepped out of the ditch, patronizingly helped Aggie out of it and swung up the path with her head in the air. When I saw her again she had taken the sign off the pump and thrown it in the grass, and was washing her hands unconcernedly while the woman stood in the door and yapped at her.

If she had a mite of sense she would have gone back to the city in the blue car and let us go home to bed. But when she had come back to the road and the young man suggested it—not to her, of course, but casually to us—she whistled to her dog and started to limp down the road. You can't do anything with a girl in that state of mind. I took her in the tonneau with me, and Aggie, who prefers a love affair to a scandal and always reads the marriage licenses with the obituaries—Aggie went in the blue car to keep Mr. Lewis from being lonely.

IV

WE DIDN'T talk very much. Tish was anxious to show she could drive, for all she had sat us down in a ditch, and after she took a wrong turning and stampeded a herd that was being milked in a barnyard I could not keep my mind off the road. Once I looked at the girl, and there were tears running down her nose and dropping into her lap. I gave her my smelling salts, which I always carry in Tish's machine, and after a while she reached over and slid her hand into mine.

"I shouldn't care if the car went to pieces," she said. "I'd be happier dead."

"If you are always as unpleasant to that young man as you were this evening, I doubt it," I snapped.