Only one evidence of productive industry was manifest in the little, straggling community. A shaped cypress log showed a blackly charred hollow along the center; it would presently be a dugout. A stolid aborigine stood near it, silent and contemplative. He was not really interested in the craft, being able to fashion a better one, himself, but he hoped to be able to steal something from the tent if the aliens relaxed their vigilance. A rod downstream, a lusty Negro wench rinsed her shift in a backwater, using potato-skin soap and singing softly the refrain of “Free grace, undyin’ love.” Amlie thought it a dubious environment for such a youth as Tip Crego.
“This Mistress Crego, now,” he said to Unk Zeb. “What does she do?”
“Oddments,” answered the old man after some thought.
“Is that all?”
The Negro made a sign with his hand. “Folks talk,” said he. “There is broom-witches. There is fork-witches. Some say one worst, some say other. Fork-witch fly in dark o’ moon. I see a broom at Mistress Quaila’s oven. I never see no dung-fork.” He shook his head, repeating the finger-sign. “What I know? Po’ ol’ niggah.”
A three-year-old with running sores lolled in a leaky batteau, picking at his face. From some unidentified spot came a sound of wheezy groaning. A fever-red woman staggered to the brink to dip a bucketful of the foul water which she emptied over her head, repeating the performance several times. There would be plenty of practice in the settlement for any medico interested enough to undertake it.
A pungent spice drifted to his nostrils from Quaila Crego’s fire. The reputed witch was selecting herbs from a hamper and dropping carefully measured proportions into a simmering kettle.
“What is this for, Mistress Crego?” he inquired presently.
“Fever,” she answered readily enough.
“Here at the Pinch?”
She shook her head wearily. “There’s no pay from the Pinch folks. I pick a penny here and there in the camps.”
“Has the fever broken out there?”
“It will, when the black moskeeter stands on her head.”
He smiled with kindly condescension. “What has the black mosquito to do with it?”
“She fetches the fevers.”
“Gypsy lore.”
“I’m no gyppo,” she retorted. “But there’s things known in their tents that folks under roof lack. They call the moskeeters fever-birds.”
He refrained from correcting her vagaries. Let her dispense her decoctions. They would do little harm.
“Thank you for being good to my boy,” said she in a low tone, and concentrated her attention upon her brew.
If any failing could be imputed to the gentle and proper Miss Agatha Levering, it must be that of being a bit of a sluggard. On this sunlit and fragrant June morning, she arose at the self-indulgent hour of eight, looped aside the coarse, stiffened-paper shades that defended her maidenly modesty against intrusive eyes, and yawned delicately. She shook the mixture of powdered cinnamon and sassafras, discouragement to possible though not probable “chintzes,” from her bedsheets which she then vigorously flounced, preparatory to hanging them out for airing. Humming lightly a hymn which dealt in a minatory spirit with sin, death and fiery torments, she made her toilet.
The day stretched before her in pleasurable prospect. First would come those daily ministrations to the poor which always imparted a warmly charitable sensation to her conscience. At eleven o’clock there was a meeting of the Palmyra Township Female Domestic Missionary Association, whose official purpose it was to speed the spread of the Gospel among the Heathen in our own Midst. With the prospective augmentation of the populace through the expected canal construction gangs, opportunities and demands along these lines would broaden. The P.T.F.D.M.A. was girding its loins for the spiritual fray.
Parallel with this endeavor ran the efforts of the newly founded Society for the Promotion of Temperance, whose initial experiment in making a roster of the town’s drinkers of alcoholic beverage had met with disconcerting resentment. Agatha was already enrolled in the Ladies’ Branch and had worked a sampler, an art wherein she excelled, displaying the exemplary motto, “Shun, O! Shun the Fiery Bowl.” For the evening, there would be the Presbyterian Bible Class meeting in the Levering parlor.
Agatha was more given to good works than might have been deduced from her good looks.
At her late breakfast, aristocratically served by a young hired girl who, contrary to village custom, did not eat with the family but in the outer limits of the kitchen, the fair daughter of the Leverings reflected upon the fact that, at the age of nineteen, she was still unmarried. This long-maintained spinsterhood she could afford to regard without rancor, since it was certainly not for lack of matrimonial opportunities. Yet the fact was not to be ignored that twice already she, the eldest girl of the family, had jigged to the rhythm of drumming kettles when two of her junior sisters had married at the appropriate ages of sixteen and seventeen respectively. Among the bitterer element of her rejected swains, a word passed that she was a Miss Betsy Uppish.
Never had the fair Agatha felt undue pulse-stir at the amorous approach of the opposite sex. Indeed, any such inner perturbation would have overwhelmed her with shame. That rakehell, Silverhorn Ramsey, had once insolently told her to her scarlet face that her veins were filled with milk and water. This was after a barefaced solicitation of her virtue at a church festival to which she had mistakenly invited him with the worthy, if offchance design of saving his soul.
Notwithstanding her virginal frigidity, the Levering eldest was not insensible to the social advantages of marriage. Each time that she gently spurned a suitable applicant, it was with the qualm inevitably attached to the prospect of one day being stigmatized as an old maid. Yet she had not been able to bring herself to a receptive view of domestic relations until she met Horace Amlie.
If her blood was not quickened by the town’s newest accession, her interest was. Upon first acquaintance she was favorably impressed by the gravity of his bearing, the eminent propriety of the sentiments expressed in his general conversation and cultivated voice, his correct apparel and manners. At the meeting in the Jerrold parlor she had learned that he liked Palmyra, was minded to remain there, that he was addicted to books and music, that he was a Presbyterian in creed and an admirer of Governor Clinton in politics, that he was familiar with such innocent pastimes as jump-the-broomstick, hunt-the-squirrel and snap-and-catch-’em, that he preferred coffee to tea, that the increase in the price of necessities was a scandal and something ought to be done about it, that he believed wholeheartedly in the Erie Canal, that he had felt no pangs of nostalgia for the fair ones of Oneida County, and that (anyway and again) he liked Palmyra very much.
To have invited him to pay an evening call would have been premature if not actually forward. In any case, considering the developing social activities of the village, she was certain to encounter him soon again, that very morning perhaps, as she went about her errands of convenience and of mercy.
Carrying a well-victualed basket which represented Christian Charity, Agatha strolled down Main Street. Shop windows enticed her eye. The emporium of Stone-Front Sarcey, opposite the Eagle Tavern, was brave with tartans, both Scotch and Circassian, flanked by a fresh and fashionable consignment of cassimeres direct from New York, true Morocco shoes, French silk gloves, calicoes, bombazettes and pelisse-cloths, Canton crepe gowns, and a breath-snatching display of gros d’Eta dress kerchiefs. Further within was an assortment of the newest Cortes headgear, bonnets of silk and straw, and a fine showing of high-toned Leghorn flats. Pious though the spirit of Agatha was, she could still thrill to the lusts of the flesh in their more innocent manifestations. When the pickle money which her mother lavishly allowed her should have mounted a little higher in the jar, she would choose delightfully among these vanities.
At the Sign of the Streaked Pole, where L. Brooks, M.D., was dressing a customer’s beard, she paused to read a placard announcing a return engagement o
f the Archbold Dramatic Troupe in How to Die for Love, or Plot & Counterplot, at the Eagle Tavern. But the theatrical performance was quite beyond the pale for a young damsel of her upbringing and professions. Moreover, she recalled uneasily, there had been some loose talk about a female member of the company openly essaying her wiles for the beguilement of young Dr. Amlie. Agatha was sure that he would have rejected any such bold advances with proper scorn. Still, one could never tell about young males. Doubtless he would be the safer and better for the restraining influence of chaste associations.
Turning north at the Presbyterian churchyard, she took the grassy sidepath toward the Pinch. The green shadows of the elms invited her. From the corner of a meek but observant eye she had discerned a well-set masculine figure ascending the slope.
Behold now Miss Agatha Levering, lost in sweetly melancholy meditation amidst the placid dead, a pretty picture in her soft, gray gown, with her soft, gray eyes contemplative upon a graven headstone and her mind not so abstracted as to be wholly unconscious of the artistic effect thus produced. The inscription which invited her gaze was an unpleasing design of skull and crossbones, framing the name of the deceased and the date, 1794. Below was jaggedly lettered a stanza, presumptively the composition of the defunct:
MY DAYS ARE SPENT
I ROT CONTENT
FOR WHAT CARE I?
SINCE I IN CHRIST
SHALL HAVE A HOIST
UP TO THE SKY.
Alert to earthly concerns though she actually was, she managed a sufficiently convincing start when a pleasantly deep voice broke in upon her reverie.
“Good morning, Miss Levering. I hope I do not intrude.”
“Law! What a start you gave me, Dr. Amlie! Good morning to you.”
“A beautiful day.”
“Beautiful, indeed! Yet how brief, how fleeting!”
“Dare I hope,” said Dr. Amlie, maintaining with a slight sense of strain the lofty level upon which the colloquy had been established, “that your path coincides with mine? I am on my way back to the village.”
“And I to visit my poor at the Pinch.”
“I have just come from there, but I should esteem it a privilege to return if I may have the honor of accompanying you.”
“I should be gratified, Dr. Amlie.”
Smiling up at him, she was really a very pretty sight. Horace Amlie was about ready to forget the misspelt and blotted missive received by post-coach that morning, twenty cents unpaid and due, from the sprightly Miss Sartie, soubrette of the Archbold Company, apprizing him of her prospective return.
He took up his companion’s basket and they made the rounds, dispersing what seemed to Horace a rather pallid selection of viands. The last parcel went to a hovel near the water’s edge. The front door was inscribed with a roughly scrawled warning:
SMALL POCKS
KEPE OUT.
Horace frowned. “Have you visited this hut before?” he asked.
“I did not go inside.”
“I hope not, indeed! Your life is too precious to risk. And your beauty,” he added boldly.
She blushed daintily. “Oh, Dr. Amlie! What is beauty, even if I possessed it, in the face of such affliction!”
Having no answer pat for so fine a sentiment, he repeated his insistence upon her departure.
“What shall you do?” she inquired.
“Wash my hands in vinegar and examine the sick person.”
“Isn’t it very dangerous?”
“I have been vaccinated. Have you?”
She shook her head. “No. Do you think I should be?”
“Most certainly. At once.”
“I will ask my father,” she promised. “Good-bye. I think it is noble of you.”
He glowed. “There is a sacred choral at the Eagle Big Room on Thursday evening. They sing ‘The Christian Martyr.’ Might I have the honor of escorting you?”
“I should be pleased,” she murmured with modestly downcast eyes. She raised them. “Promise me that you will take no needless risks of the dreadful pest.”
“I promise,” he said fervently.
The patient, a quarter-breed woman of fifty, was already on the mend. Evidently the case was a light one. Dr. Amlie gave such treatment as was indicated, and offered to vaccinate the granddaughter who shared the hut, then and there, free of charge. A whispered colloquy between the two females followed, after which the hag on the bed made her proposition: for fifty cents cash or its equivalent in whisky—she held out a tremulous hand—the strange doctor would have her leave to put the fancy powder into Lena’s arm. Horace left in helpless dudgeon. But first he sent Tip Crego about to notify the residents of the slum that Dr. Amlie would vaccinate such as were unable to pay, free of charge, at his office.
On his way back Horace found his mind reverting to Quaila Crego’s confident prophecy about the coming of the fever. Superstition and folk myth, of course. Yet hadn’t Dr. Vought once discoursed profoundly before his class on folklore, warning his hearers not to be carelessly contemptuous of what might be the stored and mysterious wisdom of age-old experience? But—mosquitoes! Standing on their heads! Absurd! Wait, though. What was that he had read about weak spots in the miasmatic theory of fevers? Hadn’t that article vaguely hinted at some connection with the insect kingdom? He must look that up when his library was once more properly shelved and ordered.
A glimpse of Agatha Levering as she emerged from the minister’s house and the flash of her smile relegated science to a far corner of his brain.
– 6 –
I will Speak my Mind, dear Diary, about my Loved and Revered Teacher. He is a Big Stinker.
(DINTY’S DIARY)
Protruding a small, pink tongue, Dinty, who disliked mathematics, wriggled as she strove with this problem:
Suppose a gentleman’s income is 1,836 doll’s per year, and he spends 3 doll’s 49 cents a day; one day with another, how much would he have saved at the year’s end?
Having worked it out four times to four different conclusions, the pupil let her mind stray to the lighter view. Her dreamy pencil set down in the blank-book lines but vaguely collateral to the income of the suppositious gentleman. In vain did her neighbor, Happalonia Vallance, nudge her. She was oblivious to the warning, until vengeance descended and she was yanked to her feet by a harsh grip on her ear while the rest of the Polite Academy raised fascinated eyes from their studies.
“What folderol is this?” demanded Prof. Larrabee’s acid tones.
“Nothing,” faltered Dinty.
“Versification!” he snorted, peering nearsightedly.
“Please, sir, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
He flourished the offending book. “We have a poet among us. Miss Araminta Jerrold will read aloud to us her latest effusion.”
Desperately Dinty racked her memory and brought forth a forlorn hope. Pretending to read from the page, she recited in meek and uplifted accents:
Oh, may my broken, contrite heart
Timely my sins lament,
And early with repentant tears
Eternal wo prevent.
“Is that what you wrote, Miss?” demanded the baleful voice.
“I was going to write it,” she quavered.
“Liar! Read what you have already written.” He thrust her nose down upon the text. In a dying cadence she faltered out:
Multiplication is vexation.
Division is as bad.
The Rule of Three
Doth puzzle me,
And Fractions drive me mad.
“Fine sentiments!” snarled the little man, working himself into a passion of outraged dignity. “A noble expression of contempt for learning! To the platform.”
This was the prelude to public castigation. Dragging the unresistant form along the aisle, he heaved it up on the dais and reached for the ruler.
Let Kindly Silence (wrote Dinty in her diary, freely plagiarizing a half-remembered poem of the day) veil the Shameful Scene.
&nbs
p; Which seems no more than fair.
White, tearless and inwardly raging, she trotted along Main Street. She had been dismissed for the day with a note to her father, prescribing that, for high crimes and misdemeanors duly specified, she be soundly chastised and kept abed until she exhibited signs of repentance.
Dinty decided that if this were done she would run away and never come back. She had had enough!
As she reached the corner of Canandaigua Road, a faint, metallic creaking arrested her progress. Swaying in the breeze, the gilded handicraft of O. Daggett advertised to the public that Medical Science waited within in the person of Horace Amlie, M.D., ready to bestow its ameliorations upon human suffering from eight to eleven in the morning and three to five in the afternoon. At other hours it was available for home ministration. Supplementary information of a more temporary character was imparted by a sheet of paper nailed to the door.
BACK IN ½ H’R
Horace was enjoying the fellowship of the smithy, to which he had been admitted on the strength of his first favorable impression.
The notice on the panel did not deter Dinty. Nor did the fact that the door was locked. She scrambled in at the window. Before going home with that damnatory note, she yearned for consolatory companionship.
Much ground may be covered in thirty minutes of diligent endeavor. Dinty started her investigations in the cabinet above the desk. First she tried to focus the microscope, without satisfactory result. The lancet box attracted her. She opened it and cautiously tried the edge of each blade. Passing from this, she examined the forceps, clamps, splints and bandages with awed interest. She puzzled over the stethoscope which she surmised to be a variety of ear trumpet. Her shin struck a sharp edge and she looked down into a tin-sheathed oblong, nearly full of water, in the murky depths of which languidly wreathed several small, obese forms. Dinty shuddered. She had been leeched for most of childhood’s ailments, and each time the obscene bloodsuckers had turned her stomach.
Canal Town Page 8
