A bit premature, perhaps, considering that the western section, joining up with Lake Erie, was not yet dug and that the extent of local navigation to be expected was a possible thirty miles.
However, there was indubitably that harbinger of marine trade, the Queen of the Waters and, from farther afield, a couple of freight Durhams from Lyons and Pittsford. If the full four feet of medial depth was not yet attained, at least there was plenty of water to buoy up any craft that wished to ply. Horses appeared, tandem, on the towpath, hauling the craft busily back and forth between the two terminals, but, as there was no great occasion for local transfer of freight, their most profitable trade was carrying parties of exultant sightseers.
By order of the Commission, the towpath was sacred to hauling. Horace Amlie, however, presuming upon his privilege as a medico, often found it his most convenient route to or from a call. Returning early in the evening from a visit to a measled household, he was astonished to see in the distance two mounted figures on the forbidden strip. The riders were moving at a slow pace; Fleetfoot’s leisurely amble soon brought him near enough to perceive that they were ladies in full rig of long skirt and feathered hat. Presumably strangers in town. Certainly this was no place for them. If a tow appeared now, they would be subjected probably to insult, and certainly to arrest and fine. He hailed them.
“Ladies! Don’t you know that you’re on Commission property?”
The horsewomen pulled up. A gay young voice inquired pertly,
“Are you the pathmaster?”
“Good Lord!” said he.
“Hello, Uncle Horace,” Dinty greeted him, and Wealthia Latham added more demurely, “Good evening to you, Dr. Amlie.”
“Good evening,” returned Horace. “But you’ve no right here, you know. It’s a five-dollar penalty.”
Wealthia tossed her head. “My pa would make nothing of paying it. Besides, who’s going to peach on us?”
In his mind, the doctor paraphrased an earlier Horace: “Oh, daughter, more arrogant than your arrogant father!” The pair had reined aside to let him pass on the narrow parapet.
“I’ll ride along with you,” said he.
The glance which passed between them told him that his offer met with no favor. What did this mean? Had he cut into a rendezvous? What sort of rendezvous, two young girls on this rough waterfront? Tip Crego, perhaps. They were moving in the direction of Poverty’s Pinch. There was no harm in Tip; he was trustworthy. Was it not time, though, that Dinty outgrew her nightfaring? And Wealthia? And the horses and costumes? Horace revised his guess. This was no innocent nature outing.
A delicate thread of music, high and clear, thrilled along the air currents, note upon silvery note, to be lost in the far silences. Wealthia Latham twisted in her saddle.
“That’s for the lock,” she said.
“They’d better be brisk, hadn’t they!” said Dinty importantly. “They’d better not keep Captain Ramsey waiting.”
“Captain, hey?” said Horace. “Has Silverhorn made good his boast to return on his own deck?”
Wealthia, her face intent and absorbed, answered absently, “It isn’t his yet. He’s captaining for the owner.”
“You’d both better get off the towpath,” suggested Horace.
Wealthia’s dark eyes flashed. “I wish you’d go away,” she cried. “Make him go away, Dinty.”
Dinty was sufficiently versed in Horace’s expression to know when tact was indicated. “I don’t believe I could, Wealthia,” said she. “Maybe we’d better go home.”
“An excellent idea,” approved Horace.
“I won’t! I won’t! I won’t!”
She was staring eagerly over her shoulder. Red and green, the sidelights of the boat appeared around the distant bend. The clear strain pierced the dusk once more.
Wealthia whirled her mount. Quick as she was, Horace was quicker. His grip on the curb brought the horse’s head down. Wealthia slashed with her riding crop at the face, drawn close to hers, then folded her arms across her eyes and sobbed furiously. The bugle sounded again, an exultant summons. She shivered all over.
Carefully Horace guided Fleetfoot to edge the puzzled horse down the declivity and across the field, Dinty following. At the turnpike he checked the little cavalcade.
“Wealthia! How far has this dangerous nonsense gone?”
“You’re not my pa.” Her face was mutinous.
“Luckily for you.”
“We just happened to ride down this way.”
“Perhaps you can persuade Mr. Latham to believe that.”
“You’re not going to tell Pa!”
“Oh, Uncle Horace, you wouldn’t be so mean!” put in Dinty.
“If you won’t tell Pa, I’ll promise not to do it again,” said Wealthia with a sidelong glance.
He had his doubts as to how much such a promise would be worth. “Don’t you realize the risk you’re running? Have you been seeing Ramsey on the sly?”
“I’ve only seen him twice since last year.”
“That’s when I should have spoken to him. It won’t lose anything by waiting, I promise you,” said Horace grimly.
“I don’t see why you can’t ’tend to your own affairs,” she complained, adding, under her breath, “Meddling old neversweat!”
The Latham mansion was dark. Mr. Latham was away. The two girls dismounted in the barnyard.
“I’m spending the night with Wealthy,” Dinty said.
He gave her no response. Under his watchful eye the pair unsaddled and stabled their mounts. Dinty lingered, curling one foot around the other ankle uncertainly, but he only sat his saddle like a disapproving statue. There was the suggestion of a slam about her closing of the door behind her.
The lamplight went on. An interval. It went off. Fleetfoot, under guidance, moved quietly into a shadow. Horace was not taking any chances. He waited.
After a time, the side door opened cautiously. With a shock he identified Dinty’s slight figure. Not as he expected. Worse! The girl called softly,
“Uncle Horace!”
He neither moved nor spoke. She was testing to ascertain whether the coast was clear. Once convinced that he had left, she would, he assumed, pursue her assignation with the dissolute canaller. So it was Dinty, not Wealthia. What precocious depravity! He was shocked to the core of his being.
“Uncle Horace!” she called again. Then, “I know you’re there. I can smell your horse.”
Tip Crego’s tutelage again, teaching her to use her senses. He walked out to meet her.
“Where were you going?”
“To find you.”
“If you hadn’t found me?”
“How mean you sound!” she complained. “I’d have gone to bed.”
“Where you are supposed to be now. Are you telling me the truth?” he demanded searchingly.
“Of course I’m telling you the truth, Uncle Horace.”
“You weren’t going back to meet Silverhorn Ramsey?”
“Who? Me?” Her astonishment was so candid that he drew a breath of relief. “Why, I hardly know him to pass the time of day.”
“That’s too much. And you’d better not be abetting that silly fidget in her flightiness. Does the little fool think she’s in love with him?”
“She says she’s mortally stricken, but perchance ’tis but a passing fancy, light as a fleeting cloud.”
“Perchance, eh? I see you’ve been pursuing your extra-curricular reading while at school.”
“I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t sound nice. Uncle Horace, you’re not going to tell her Pa on Wealthy, are you?”
“I shall use my own judgment as to that.”
“If you do, I think you’re a pesky sneak.”
“Don’t speak to me that way, Araminta,” he snapped.
“Araminta, indeed! Aren’t you ever going to stop treating me like a child?”
“What else, in heaven’s name, do you think you are?” said the exasperated Horace. �
��And a very froward and high-minded one, into the bargain.”
“Good night, Dr. Amlie,” said Dinty with an air of resentful dignity, and withdrew in good order.
To make certain that all was safe, Horace rode to the lower lock. Yes, the keeper said, the Firefly, Captain Silverhorn Ramsey, had leveled out at nine-fifty on her eastward way. Silverhorn had blown a terrible blast for the lock and had cursed him, the lock-keeper, with every villainy in the canal language for being slow. He was in a foul humor. Horace chuckled with satisfaction as he cantered home to bed.
Passing the Fashion Store on the following morning, Horace Amlie was beset and seized by a darting figure.
“Come inside,” invited Dinty.
“What’s the matter now?”
“I want your advice on something extremely important.” She pulled him to a mirror where she adjusted upon her jaunty curls a Leghorn flat at least ten years too old for her. “How does that set me?”
“Not at all.”
“Oh, dear! What a disappointment you are! Men never know anything about styles.”
“Let the styles go. You’re not looking well,” said he severely.
Dinty assumed the air of meek martyrdom with which she received rebuke or criticism. “It’s that plaguey school,” she averred.
“Nonsense! It’s an excellent school.”
“Not for me,” she denied. “They never take their eyes off you. If you couldn’t sleep nights for hearing the woods call you and loving and longing for them, what would you do?”
“I wouldn’t run away with the minister’s son.”
“I had to do something. I think I’m going into a decline,” said Dinty, observing herself with mournful attention in the glass, then setting the Leghorn at a fresh angle with renewed interest.
“I think you’re not,” returned Horace. “You tell your father to send you to me for a thorough going-over, from head to foot.”
“From head to foot?” she breathed. “All over?”
The tone of dismay annoyed him. “Of course, all over. Why not?”
“I—I don’t want you to.”
“Oh! You don’t want me to. Any special reason?”
Dinty’s eyes slid sidelong away from his. She poked at a floor crack with the toe of her boot. “I’m too grown-up. I don’t think it’s delicate,” she murmured.
“Delicate! Good God! I’m your physician. You’re no more to me than a cadaver.”
“If you think that’s nice!” said poor Dinty wrathfully. “Ma wouldn’t let me, anyway. She says you’re no better than a Goth and a Vandal.”
Horace grunted. “Your mother would do better to quit dosing you with her panaceas.”
“I’m so grown-up,” said Dinty, reverting to that line of thought, “that Pa has promised to take me to the Canal Cotillion for a little while. Are you going to be there?”
“I suppose so.”
“I know how to dance now, Uncle Horace,” said she hopefully.
Horace had other matters in mind. “If I were the committeemen,” he said, “I’d wait awhile before celebrating the canal.”
Dinty sighed. “Good-bye, Uncle Horace.”
By proverbial complaint of the medical profession some woman always went into labor on a party night. This time, it was a ropewalker’s wife, two miles out. It was eleven o’clock before Horace could get home, put on his uniform, and hurry to the Eagle. Dinty had already been harried home to bed, protesting bitterly, but Wealthia Latham, more privileged, was there, the center of an eager circle of callow youth. With uneasiness Horace remarked Silverhorn Ramsey, not of the circle, indeed, but watching the fair fledgling from a corner. He was a gaillard figure in his captain’s blue-and-gold, with a tiny packet-boat woven upon the lapel of his supercloth broadcoat, as he lolled gracefully.
To Horace, Wealthia was still the little girl friend of the other little girl, Dinty. He preserved his attitude of protectiveness toward both of them impartially. It stirred anew as he observed Silverhorn moving forward to join the group of swains. Had she signaled him? As he bent over her hand, Horace thought that her expression was one of apprehension as well as fluttered and flattered delight.
Shortly before midnight, that happened which was a frequent concomitant of such festivities. A careless dancer knocked over a candle. A curtain flared. Some fool shouted “Fire!” The damsels present screamed daintily. Rising heroically to the test, their swains rushed forward. All was over in five minutes with small danger but great excitement. Horace, who had been foremost in the rush, now disengaged himself and started for the taproom for a refresher.
On the way, he passed an alcove hung with portieres, from behind which he heard Wealthia’s rich contralto, already deepening to womanly timbre, raised a little in tremulous excitation.
“Oh, Captain Ramsey! I wouldn’t dare.”
“Nobody would know. She’s such a pretty boat.”
“I know she’s dicty. But how could I get away? Oh!”
“What is it, little darling?”
“Someone outside. I heard them.”
Horace had coughed. Wealthia darted past him, her face mazed, her eyes heavy. Silverhorn sauntered after with a careless nod for the involuntary eavesdropper.
“Looking for something, young Æsculapius?”
“You’d better be careful, Ramsey.”
“Free advice from a medico?”
“I’ll be treating you for bullet in the belly if Genter Latham hears of this.”
“How would you like a knife in the ribs for yourself?”
“Are you trying to scare me?”
“I’ve scared bolder. Peaceable ways first, though. You’ll make more trouble than you can mend if you flap your jawbone about this. Think that over in your sleep.” He passed along with a mock salute.
Horace had no need to think it over. At the outset of his career he had taken a resolution never to meddle in the private and personal affairs of any patient. That way lay infinite complications. But what he would not do directly might be achieved through an agent. He reintroduced the subject with Dinty when he saw her next day. She fetched a cavernous sigh.
“Wealthy is cruel unhappy,” she informed him in her most impressive manner. “She’s desperate enamored.”
“Childish infatuation,” barked Horace.
“This is different. Captain Ramsey has stolen her young and tender heart. She sleeps but to dream of him; she wakes but to thoughts of him; she breathes but to …”
“Children ought to be barred from the hire-library,” broke in Horace in exasperation. “I never heard such balderdash.”
“Sometimes,” breathed Dinty, “I wonder if a great and blinding love will ever come to me.”
“A great and blinding box on the ear will come to you in a minute! Now, see here, child; I want you to keep watch on Wealthia and if she makes any further attempt to see that scoundrel, I want to know it.”
“Would you have me turn spy on my best friend?” cried she, striking an attitude, and immediately adding, “I’d love it. I’ll get Tip to help me.”
“A sound idea,” Horace approved.
He was about closing shop on the following Monday when he heard a lightsome male voice trolling a ribald parody of the pious Watts.
“When I can aim my rifle clear
At pigeons in the skies,
I’ll bid farewell to beans and beer
And live on pigeon pies.”
The imitator of the hymnologist pushed through the entry. Silverhorn Ramsey made the mock sign of benediction.
“Hail, sucking Galen! Are you at call professionally?”
“At your service.”
“I’m feeling seedy. Been a bit careless, I guess.”
More explicit indications were unnecessary after a brief examination.
“You have,” confirmed Horace.
“Those damned road wenches!”
“You’ve had a drink, I observe.”
“I’ve had three. What the hell is it to
you?”
“No more liquor, if I’m to take your case.”
“And no more women, I presume,” jeered the other.
“You should know that without my telling you.”
“All right! All right!” said the caller impatiently. “How long to clear up this little matter?”
“Uncertain. To be thorough and sure involves a slow regimen.”
“Give me a notion.”
“Three months minimum.”
“Too long. Halve it and we can deal.”
Horace shook his head. “Minimum, I said. I can give you the full strength cubeb-and-mercury treatment, but it is severe. It might keep you off your run.”
“Cholera wouldn’t keep me off the run. I’ll take your embolics and like ’em if they’ll do the trick.”
“I should advise the slower treatment, however.”
“None of your pinchgut potions for me. I’ll swallow the whole damned armentarium if it will fix me up the sooner. There’s a special reason.” His grin became sardonic. “In the sacred confidence of our noble profession …
“Not our profession,” Horace corrected him.
“I was a sucking medic for three months. Know the Hippocratic oath as well as you do.”
“Anything that passes between us here is safely secret, if that is what you’re driving at,” said Horace stiffly.
“I know your kind,” returned the other. “Conscience hag-rides you. That old bitch never bothered me much, though I can see her usefulness in others. Now, but for your conscience I might not risk coming to you.”
“Spare me your philosophy. I can’t minister to a diseased soul. Sit down.”
Horace was ensconced behind his broad, new consultation table, upon which at the moment, stood four learned tomes, an instrument box, his microscope and a half dozen bottles of featherweight glass containing various liquids. The patient took the chair opposite. There was wafted from him the dainty odor of pomatum, shining on the long curls which rippled across his temples and draped downward to meet the luxuriant side whiskers. Notwithstanding his disability, he bore himself with that air of blithe self-satisfaction which was part of his charm.
Canal Town Page 23
