Being affianced to Agatha, Horace discovered, involved more obligations than privileges. Although she seldom proffered a direct request, he was expected to be at call to beau her around to such blameless entertainments as she frequented, for the most part of a devout or eleemosynary nature. Rarely did he find himself alone with her. On such occasions the most he ever got from his advances was a frustrated nibble at the corner of shrinking lips. And this was to continue for a year. A weary wait!
Surely Agatha was worth waiting for. She was gentle and sweet. She would make a model wife.… Did he want a model wife? Of course he wanted a model wife. Above all, he wanted a wife. “It is better to marry than to burn.” Say! What kind of saint was St. Paul, anyway! How did he know so much?
Horace had acquired a new interest, the Crego boy. It came about through his treatment of the “gathering” in Quaila Crego’s ear, following Dinty’s appeal, an ailment which had resisted the sovereign home remedy of cotton batting heated in rancid oil and sprinkled with black pepper. Here was proper occasion for the lancet, and Horace employed it successfully. It seemed a favorable opportunity for speaking to the alleged witch about the nocturnal jaunts on which her alleged nephew still took Dinty.
“The child is getting too old for that sort of thing,” said he. “You ought to forbid Tip taking her on these silly ventures after treasure that isn’t there.”
“Treasure!” echoed the witch-woman with scorn. “That’s but a makeshift. It’s the running in the night, the sweetness of rain on your face, the sounds and smells of the quiet forest. Don’t I know!” She began to rock herself back and forth. “Leave them be,” she muttered. “What good to harstle ’em with forbiddances that they wouldn’t heed! If the child did not run with my Tip, she would with another, or alone. Leave be! There’s no ill in it. I knew another girl child that had the night in her heart. Her folks penned her behind bars to wear it out. The blood withered in her and she went mad. No, no, you science-man! This is a thing beyond your book-knowledge. I have made a charm for the girl against all dangers of the dark. Let her run free. She will outgrow it.” The seamed face saddened. “I doubt she will ever be as happy afterward.”
Impressed in spite of himself, Horace said, “Tell the boy, then, that I hold him responsible.”
Quaila Crego inclined her head, accepting the charge. “The boy,” she said. “A good boy. I hope great things for the boy. You’re a college-reared gentleman, Doctor. Could my Tip go to college? To your college?”
“To Hamilton? I don’t know why not. He has the love of science in him.”
“Schooling, too,” she said eagerly. “I have swinked and sweated to buy him books when there was little to put in the kettle. He is good at his lessons.”
Horace said hesitantly, “Later I might be able to help him with a small advance. Has he Latin?”
“For his age. And the mathematics. Well-read in religion, too. But not the Greek.”
“I could tutor him.”
Quaila exclaimed at his generosity. But Horace was no more than acting in the spirit of his time. Among young men of culture there was a missionary fervor to find and cultivate proselytes to learning; a sort of permanent evangelical ardor which burned, not as flashed the spasmodic religious outbursts in volcanic upheavals of righteousness, but with a clearer and steadier flame.
Thus it was arranged that, through the winter, Tip should report to the physician for instruction three evenings a week, and pay his scot—the Cregos insisted on this—by bringing in furs and game. Dinty was ecstatic over the arrangement. She came in specially to thank Horace. Her manner was exemplary, but her eyes kept roving from the chaste example of Miss Levering’s needle-art to the vacant space whence her own sampler had been dispossessed.
“When are you going to be married, Dr. Amlie?” she inquired with her best social intonation.
“Next fall. Or perhaps summer.”
“That’s a long time,” said Dinty brightly. “Lots of things could happen.” The light waned from her expression. “I won’t see you much after that, I guess.”
“Nonsense! Why not?”
“She doesn’t like me.”
“You shouldn’t say such things. Certainly Miss Agatha likes you. She likes everybody,” he concluded lamely.
Dinty shook her head. “I wish you were my uncle,” said she with apparent irrelevance.
“Do you? Why?”
“Oh, just because.” She elaborated after reflection. “I did have an Uncle Horace once. He drank and played cards for money and blasphemed. So when he went out west to hunt for furs and the Indians scalped him, Ma said it was a judgment on his sins. Couldn’t you be my Uncle Horace?” she asked hopefully.
“Would I have to drink and play cards for money and blaspheme?”
Dinty twisted herself in mirth over the delicious joke. “I didn’t know you could be so funny,” she gurgled. “I used to think you were awfly solemn.”
“I’m very particular about how my nieces behave,” he warned.
“Then you will be my Uncle Horace!” she crowed. “That’s just lovely. Now she can’t keep us apart.”
“Dinty! I shall be angry in a minute.”
“I don’t care.” Joy made her reckless. “I don’t see why you had to put my sampler that I worked so hard over in the other room just because you’re going to marry her.”
“It’s where I can see it every night and morning,” said he weakly.
She was not appeased. “I don’t see why people fall in love,” she said, wagging her head in despair over the insoluble mystery. “Wealthy’s in love with Wittie Evernghim. It’s so silly! I don’t think you’re silly, though,” justice impelled her to add. “Is Miss Agatha silly?”
“Certainly not.” There was a hint of a sigh in his response.
“I’d like her better if she was. I don’t believe I’ll call you Uncle Horace while she’s around. She might not understand it. It’ll be our secret. Good-bye, dear Uncle Horace.” She bobbed at him and left.
Shortly after the New Year, Genter Latham, who had developed his money-brokerage to the dimensions of a one-man bank, made Horace an offer to finance his home-building. This was not alone a business proposition; it was also, in the Latham fashion, a final composition of the quarrel. Horace thanked him but demurred.
“I have never liked the idea of going in debt.”
“Sound business is based on wise debt,” said the financier sententiously.
The prospective groom asked for time to consider and brought up the topic that evening with his fiancée.
“It would advance our marriage by months,” he said ardently.
Her hand went to her breast. “Wouldn’t it be wiser to wait until you have the money, yourself, Horace?” she fluttered. “Of course, whatever you think right is best,” she added, assuming in advance the role of dutiful spouse. She rose and went over to poke the fire in a great Dutch oven. “Only—would it be very soon?”
He resolved to take up Mr. Latham’s offer. Before going to bed that night he read a chapter of De Weese on The Nervous System of Females with painful misgivings.
Normally winter was the slack season in Palmyra. This year trade quickened. The mere expectancy of becoming a canal town stimulated business. New building was projected. The brickyard advertised that it would have five hundred thousand bricks for sale in the spring. One harbinger of new fortunes now took to making frequent visits. Dropping in at Dr. Amlie’s office, Silverhorn Ramsey encountered in the hallway the fair Agatha, lingering modestly on the threshold while her mother indulged in a gossip with Mrs. Barnes of the ropewalk. He swept off his glossy beaver with elaborate gallantry. The maiden shrank away from the quondam insulter of her purity.
“What!” he ejaculated, in nowise discomfited. “Does Beauty tarry in the inclemency of winter while fusty Science pores over his books within? We shall remedy that.”
Raising the bugle to his lips, he delivered a ringing note, then held open the door as might a herald
for his queen. Chin aloft, Agatha stared at blankness, desperately hoping that her demeanor expressed the proper loathing while her nerves thrilled. Horace thrust forth a grinning face.
“Be off with you, you oaf! Come back when … Ah, Agatha! Forgive me. Come in, my dear.”
“Wounded in heart as well as hand,” said Silverhorn, waving the bandaged member and with the languishing glance which he never spared any pretty woman. “I return anon.”
Tactfully awaiting the departure of the ladies, Silverhorn returned.
“I’ve got a little account to be settled with you,” said Horace, and grimly presented the uncurrent and unredeemable Niagara note.
Silverhorn stared at it with well-assumed surprise. “Well, by the left hind leg of the Lamb of God, d’you mean to tell me …?
“No blasphemy,” said Horace sternly.
“Is that the note I gave you?”
“It certainly is.”
“Put it on my next bill.”
“Your next bill will be paid in advance.”
“Well said, my merry Swiss boy. Hard coin’s the ticket. Patch up my sprained thumb, and then I’ve a word to say to you about the Ditch.”
“Say your word,” said Horace, loosening the bandage and setting to work.
“Have you figured when it’ll be finished at the present rate?”
“Not this year, I daresay. Nor next.”
“Not in ten years, by God! And that means never. The people won’t go on paying the bills. The politicians will sicken of it. The whole thing will go flat as a flounder.”
“What is that to you?” asked Horace curiously.
“I’ve got a stake in this canal,” returned the young man. “There’s capital waiting to build me a boat. I’ll be my own owner and captain; I can make my pile, knowing what I do about the traffic. You’ll see me a millionaire-man before I die.” He dropped the braggart tone and talked shrewdly and sensibly of the project and its difficulties. Horace was surprised and impressed. “There’s just one thing that can beat it and is beating it—the fever,” continued the caller. “It’ll be back on us next summer, won’t it?”
“Probably.”
“And worse than this year. It gets worse every year. Doesn’t it?”
“Some authorities so hold,” said Horace cautiously.
“I know so. I’ve seen it on the Santee and I’ve seen it on the Dismal Swamp. What do the weevily contractors know or care? All they look to is their poxy contract profits and Old Horny may stick the canal in his pants pocket. But you and I know that sick men can’t dig.”
“You seem to have given thought to it,” commented Horace.
“Didn’t I tell you I’ve got a stake in seeing it go through?” retorted the other impatiently. “I hear you tried to get the Latham camps moved to the high ground. Why?”
“To get the men out of the miasmas.” Horace was becoming more and more interested.
“What’s a miasma? What do you know about it?”
“Not very much,” Horace admitted.
“No, nor anyone else. The medical blueskins spout and lather about miasmas, but all they really know about ’em you could stuff into a gnat’s eye without making him wink.” He fixed Horace with his keen and meditative glance. “Ever hear that gnats carry the fevers?”
Horace sat up sharply. “Have you?”
“There was an old fusty who lectured on it once at—well, where I was. The students egged him.”
Horace was becoming excited. “I’ve been all through my medical books looking for that very thing. It isn’t there. Yet I know I’ve read it somewhere.”
“The old Johnny-come-lately had an article in a magazine to back him up,” said Silverhorn. “The Medical Repository. Something like that.”
Memory settled into place with a brain-click. Horace swore softly. “Medical Repository! I’ve got a file in my trunk.”
His visitor rose and stretched with feline abandon. “On the rangdang last night,” he yawned. “Well, young Æsculapius, I guess we’re together on this. If there’s any fighting in the wind, straight, cross, or rough-and-tumble, call on Silverhorn Ramsey. And so good day to you, my bonnie blade, for I’m off o’er the heather with a hi and a ho and a gallant cock’s-feather to flaunt as I go.”
Hardly waiting for the door to close after his strange ally, Horace hastened to rummage among his old publications. Here it was, the file of the Repository back to 1816. He leafed feverishly through the pages. Eureka! A leading article in the 1818 file. The author boldly advanced the revolutionary theory that fevers did not inhere in the mists and miasmas, but that “moschettoes and perhaps other insects” were the cause of them by “importing deadly molecules” from the marshes and communicating them to the human species by their bites or by merely carrying the disease-agents adhering to feet or wings.
Horace sat, bemused, staring at the page. The “fever-birds” of the gypsies. Witch Crego’s word—“when the black moskeeter stands on her head …” Folklore. What was it that the wise pioneer of his Fairfield days, himself a bold skeptic, used to tell his classes? Horace could recall the very words.
“Gentlemen, all that we know of disease, its causes, its courses, its cures, is a nodule of dew in the Atlantic of what remains to be discovered. Therefore it behooves us to receive with open minds the lore of the ignorant and untaught, which may have its roots in forgotten wisdom.”
The thesis set forth in that careful and moderate magazine treatment had been obliterated from the minds of men. They had rottenegged Silverhorn’s lecturer, the instinctive mob response to disturbing innovation. Horace had a foreboding that the theory would not be more hospitably received in Palmyra.
– 13 –
Reverend Missionary Eaton says that ½ the World does not Know what the other ½ is doing, and Pa says Maybe it is Just as Well.
(DINTY’S DIARY)
It is the unique indiscretion of the stern science of Economics that Vice should so often march in the vanguard of Prosperity. The two poor mopsies, whose humble start called forth the righteous journalistic wrath of the Reverend Editor Strang, waxed fat as Jeshurun on their earnings and gathered to them others of the ancient sisterhood. They acquired a tumbledown log cabin beyond the Pinch, cleansed it, had it put in repair, outfitted it with furniture, and formed a business organization under the leadership of a stringy, shrewd-eyed, trade-minded Welshwoman from Olden Barneveld called Gwenny Jump. The place became known to the bated breath of public scandal as the Settlement. In one respect it was a pioneer institution; the rule of the house was money down.
It was the first strictly cash business in local retail trade and, as such, was a considerable though unacknowledged factor in commercial readjustment. The Rev. Theron Strang preached three rousing sermons upon the resort, choosing as his text, “She painted her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a window.” Of the final blast Carlisle Sneed admiringly declared that you could smell the stink of brimstone from Macedon Lock to the ropewalk.
Soon after the opening for business, Gwenny Jump came to Dr. Amlie’s office. One of her girls was coughing and spitting blood. She had called on Dr. Murchison first, she frankly admitted, but had been told that he wanted none of her trade. If Dr. Amlie felt the same way about it …
Dr. Amlie did not feel the same way about it. Certainly he would come. As soon as office hours were over. Miss Jump was grateful. She would pay extra. Everyone charged her girls double rates, so why not Dr. Amlie? Horace explained that his charges were fixed and bore no ratio to abstract or concrete morality.
There was little to be done with the unfortunate patient. Horace tried the “displacement” method, though with small faith in its efficacy. This consisted in attempting to transfer the focus of the disease, by drugs, cuppings and blisterings to some other locality where it could be more effectually treated. The books—those authoritative volumes which crowded his shelves and in which his confidence was dwindling day by day in the light of experience—cited brillian
t examples of driving “a consumption” out of the lung into the armpit, the groin, even the great toe, whence it was presently eliminated to the admiration of the patient and the greater glory of medical science. To Horace it was suspiciously reminiscent of a more ancient process along the same line, the exorcism of devils. He never had any luck with it.
Though his success with the unfortunate Millie’s case was impermanent and palliative only, his natural kindliness and conscientious care impressed these women, accustomed as they were to abuse and neglect. Before he knew it, he was installed as unofficial consultant to a brothel. It was profitable, for Gwenny paid on the nail, but Horace knew his Palmyra well enough to foresee trouble. He would have liked to abandon the whole thing. Conscience and human sympathy forbade.
It did not take long for the conversational junto at the smithy to learn of Dr. Amlie’s new connection. Opinion was divided as to his wisdom. Some held that all was and should be fish that came to a new doctor’s net. Others considered that he was foolishly compromising his good name on a line of practice which probably wouldn’t bring in much, anyway.
“Maybe he takes it out in trade,” sniggered Carlisle Sneed.
“A foul tongue for a foul mind,” said the big smith in grave rebuke. “The young man does his duty as he sees it.”
Lawyer Upcraft told his wife, and Mrs. Upcraft carried it over to Mrs. Jerrold, thereby insuring general currency to the gossip, for what Dorcas Jerrold knew, the town knew as soon after as might be. One of the first recipients of the information was Mrs. Levering, who deemed it a duty to pass it on to her daughter. Agatha paled, wept and refused to believe that Horace would have any traffic, even professionally, with Those Creatures. Mr. Levering said leave it to him; he would speak firmly to the young man about it. At the following Friday evening call, he put on his black and churchly coat and made a stage entrance into the parlor where Horace was awaiting his fiancée. After a preliminary haw and hum, the father opened proceedings.
Canal Town Page 15
