“Why, my dear, she hasn’t finished her schooling yet.”
“She knows more than I did at her age.”
Squire Jerrold thought it likely, but was too tactful to agree. “She is so innocent and unformed in many ways,” he objected.
“Innocent!” said Mrs. Jerrold darkly.
“Well, about marriage and—and all that sort of thing,” stumbled the father. “Do you suppose she knows anything about it?”
Mrs. Jerrold tossed her ringleted head. “She thinks she knows all about everything.”
“What leads you to suppose that, my dear?”
“I’ve tried to tell her but she only gets fretty and fidgety and won’t listen to me.”
“That doesn’t necessarily prove anything.” The Squire had a juster view than his wife of Dinty’s reticences. He sensed a frightened delicacy, a reserve for which Mrs. Jerrold had only impatience.
“Then you tell her,” said she maliciously.
“God forbid!” was the hasty reply. “Let her find out when the time comes. Is there anyone in particular?”
“Oh, she has plenty of aspirants,” answered his wife in accents indicating that she could not understand why. “Young Philip Macy and the Barnes youth, and a handful from Albany, and the Devereux cousins from Utica, and two or three young blades from. New York, so I am informed. My choice is Marcus Dillard.”
The manly Squire pulled a wry face. “A frippery fop,” he observed.
“You’re hard to please, Squire,” complained his wife. “He’s the catch of the town. With mint prices going up, his father will be a millionaire-man yet. Araminta will have all that her heart could desire.”
Squire Jerrold sighed. A rich marriage would not be amiss. His own affairs had not been prospering. Those troublesome lawsuits over the canal damages had forced him to borrow heavily from his friend, Latham, and the twelve percent interest was wearing him down.
“What does Dinty think of him?” he asked.
Mrs. Jerrold sniffed. “How should she know what she wants? Miss Betsy Uppish! A husband will tame her.”
By Squire Jerrold’s guess, if young Mark Dillard were the husband, the taming would more likely be the other way around. However, there was no doubt that the match would be an advantageous one. But what about the Dillards?
“First catch your hare,” he remarked.
“La! There’s no hindrance there. The young fool is dowzened over her. He’s taking the packet to Albany next week to see her. Mrs. Dillard—she’s another ninnyhammer—fears he will go into a decline if he is thwarted. She was here to see me only yesterday.”
“Have you talked with the child about it?”
“I shall when she returns.” Dorcas Jerrold’s curved lips straightened to an uncompromising thinness. “For once she will do as she is bidden, unless you support her obduracy.”
The Squire sighed again. “Very well, Dorcas. I shall not interfere. This is woman’s business. But be gentle with my little girl.”
Dinty and Wealthia came home by coach. On one point, the Jerrolds found their daughter on the verge of rebellion. She could not bear to go back to the academy. Anything rather than that. She would run away. Or teach school. Or—or get married. Why must she learn any more? Why shouldn’t she stay home, as Wealthia was going to do, and enjoy life? Palmyra was such fun!
There were two dark spots in Dinty’s visit home. She sorrowed for Tip Crego, from whom no word had come. And she was deeply offended and puzzled by her erstwhile Uncle Horace. He had never answered her letter. He had ignored her existence. Very well, she could do some ignoring, herself. But not without one naive attempt at re-establishing the old comradeship. As a reminder she slipped into his office in his absence, and left on his table a fresh nosegay of the mixed white polly-whog and Indian pink. Could it be three years since Wealthy and she had enlivened Mrs. Harte’s dull ménage with a similar bouquet? Would the recipient remember?
If he did, he made no sign. For, on the day before he found the floral offering, he had met Dorcas Jerrold who had informed him, with a smile of delicate malice, that Araminta was going to marry Marcus Dillard. It was still a secret; she was telling him because he had always exhibited such a special interest in the child.
The scion of the Dillards had, indeed, been manifesting zeal. The formidable rivalry of the contingent from the eastern counties spurred his ardor. Nor was he without local competition. The handsome and elegant Philip Macy had deserted Wealthia’s standard for Dinty’s; De Witt Evernghim, Arlo Barnes and Jared Upcraft were now definitely of her court, with the result that the damsel’s days and evenings were filled with engagements. Horace hardly more than glimpsed her, riding horseback with one or another of her visiting suitors, embarking on the Dillard pleasure barge for a canal party, or driving behind Philip Macy’s matched roans. In those lists he felt that his age would render him absurd. In fact, Mrs. Jerrold had let fly a barbed hint to that effect.
Late one evening when Dinty was returning from a gay party, she remarked a light in Dr. Amlie’s window and thought that it could not be good for him to work so hard. Having bidden her several escorts good night at the door of the stone mansion, she went to her room, took off her dainty party gown and hung it carefully in the press, but felt no desire for sleep. The half-open window lured her with the old, imperious call. She got out her house-hussey’s dress, in which she used to help on cleaning days, and slipped into it. It was short-skirted and half-sleeved. A pair of stout boots completed her outfit. She let herself lightly down from the window and was off.
No special plan was in her mind; she merely felt restless and adventurous. Why wasn’t Tip at hand? She would peek in at Dr. Amlie’s window, perhaps hoot like an owl to give him a good startle, then make herself one with the night.
Arrived at his gate, she hesitated. It might squeak. Most gates squeaked. Anyway, what need had she for a gate? In that dress her childhood had come back upon her; she felt hoyden-free. She vaulted the fence and crept, cat-footed, to the window. What she saw within caught her breath and disarranged her lighthearted plan.
Her Dr. Amlie sat, staring across an opened pamphlet at an absurd object which she had long forgotten, but recognized on sight. Years before—they seemed very long to her now, those three years—a traveling artist with a camera obscura had visited Palmyra. She could even recall his name; it was Willoughby, and he had blond, inadequate whiskers and looked ill-fed. Through the medium of his frosted glass he had sketched Wealthy Latham and herself, only a shilling for the pair because, he said, they were young and pretty. Wealthia’s portrait was successful; she had instinctively assumed the most advantageous pose; but Dinty had sat on a fence, whereupon Mrs. Jerrold had banished the work as Tillie-Tomboyish and Dinty had presented it to Dr. Amlie in a frame which she wove of willow-withe and labeled “Friendship’s Guerdon.”
This it was which now stood on the work table distracting the physician’s attention from his proper toil. Beside it the nosegay of swamp-blooms withered in their vase.
Emotion overcame Dinty. She gulped. With a startled motion Horace swept the penciled picture into a drawer.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me,” said Dinty.
“Has anything happened?”
“Nothing but me. I just happened to see your light.”
“It’s an untimely hour for little gir—for you to be about.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Why not?”
Dinty put her elbows on the sill and her chin on her arms. “You’re mean to me.”
“Nonsense.”
“You are. You never answered my letter.”
“I did. But I—forgot to mail it.”
“What did you say in it?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Oh, Uncle Horace!”
“There it is,” said he glumly. “Uncle Horace!”
“What else is there to call you? Except Dr. Amlie.”
He grunted.
; “Aren’t you going to ask me in?”
“Why, I suppose so.”
She reversed her hands on the sill, preparatory to entry by that route, but changed her mind and walked sedately around to the office door which he held open for her. At his bidding she sat down, but not in the patient’s chair which he advanced, preferring to perch on the high table.
“I want your advice,” she said. “Your very par-tic-cu-lar advice.”
“These aren’t precisely office hours.” At last he was smiling as he studied her. “You look well enough,” he observed.
“Thank you for so overwhelming a compliment,” she returned demurely. “I’m well in my health.”
“How else would you expect to be well?”
“Please don’t make fun of me. It’s very serious. I’ve nobody else to go to but you.”
“Is it Wealthia again?”
Dinty pouted. “I think you might stop worrying about Wealthy and worry about me.”
“Well, stop swinging your legs and tell me about it.”
“Do you think I ought to marry Mark Dillard, Uncle Horace?”
“Why shouldn’t you?” he returned in a voice intended to be judicial.
“There’s loads of reasons why I should.” She ticked them off, fingerwise. “He keeps pestering me to. And Ma picks on me to. And the Dillards want me to. And he’s got a boat of his own and a gig, newer than yours with a tandem instead of just a mare, and Deacon Dillard will build us a stone house with leaded eagles in the door-sides and I shall insist on a separate room for me because I must always sleep with my window open—my doctor told me to—” (with a sideglance) “and we’ll have a hired hussey to do the house-cleaning and wine Saturday evenings, and if I want to read in bed there’ll be nobody to stop me.” She looked at him speculatively. “Were you going to build a separate room for Miss Agatha, Uncle Horace?”
“Never mind Miss Agatha.”
“I do mind. I’ve always minded,” declared Dinty vehemently. She calmed down. “Ma says the sooner I am wedded, the better for all concerned.”
“What does she mean by that?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. Do you?”
“You’ve left out one point,” he said. “How do you feel about it?”
Dinty’s gaze wandered to the window. Little furrows of consideration appeared between the troubled eyes. “He’s a very superior young gentleman,” she recited. “He’ll be cruel rich. He adores the ground that my foot presses, the flower that rises and falls with my breath, the air that parts my lips, the …”
“Stop it!”
“He’s got six suits of elegant apparel, and a bay tandem, and a pleasure boat …”
“You mentioned the boat before.”
“Did I?” she murmured vaguely. “It’s an awfly dicty boat. I’ve always liked boats.”
“Then you do want to marry him.”
“I haven’t made up my mind.”
“Then why don’t you make it up?”
“Because.”
“That’s no reason, my dear.”
“You needn’t call me your dear in that uppity way,” she fretted. “Anyhow, it’s the best reason I’ve got. And I think you’re being dumb, dumb, dumb. You’re no help to me at all,” she concluded plaintively.
“What chance have I? You do and you don’t. You will and you won’t. How can I advise a weathercock?”
“Now you’re being mean to me. D’you remember the day I took the spots out of your coat?”
“No.”
“You do so! And how you cussed when Mark Dillard interrupted us at the Eagle ball?”
“Keep to the subject.”
“Well, why don’t you say something?”
“I did. I asked you if you want to marry him?”
She reached over to remove a petal from the spire of Indian pink leaning toward her, sniffed at it, and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I ought to come back and take care of your house,” she said.
“Do you want to marry him or don’t you?” asked Horace patiently.
“I like him well enough. But it isn’t the tender passion. Not like in books and poetry.” Her shoulders rose and fell with the elaborate breath of her sigh. “Do you suppose, if I waited, I’d ever feel the tender passion?”
“You’ve time enough left yet,” he suggested.
“I don’t want to wait till I’m old-maidish. Like Miss Agatha. She was almost twenty.”
“Are we discussing Mrs. Sickel or Marcus Dillard?”
“What do you think of him?”
“I think he is all you say.” Horace deemed that admirably diplomatic.
She studied his expression, which was strictly noncommittal. “I don’t believe you like him. Shall I tell you something, Uncle Horace?” A dazzling smile illuminated her. “Neither do I. Not truly.”
“Why not?”
“He’s so daffy-down-dilly.” She made languorous, elegant and disparaging motions with hands and arms. “Besides,” she added, reverting to an earlier grievance, “he always smells of mint extract. I think of it as soon as he comes near me. Just as I always think of arnica when I see you. Arnica is such a nice, clean smell.” She pleated folds across her knee. “So you advise me not to marry Mark.”
“Nothing of the sort. It isn’t for me to advise.”
“How can you say that! I wouldn’t be here at all if you hadn’t cut my throat.” She arched up her rounded chin to give him full view. “Doesn’t it look nice?”
It was, indeed, a workmanlike scar in which any surgeon might have taken proper and professional pride. But Horace’s sentiments, as his eyes rested on that delicate contour, were not those of pride nor were they wholly proper and professional.
“Very nice,” he assented.
“You aren’t looking at it,” she complained. “Feel. There’s hardly any mark at all.”
She caught his hand, pressed it into the soft hollow, and nuzzled down on it like an affectionate little animal. Horace freed himself abruptly.
“So that makes you responsible for me. My family are awfly set on it,” she went on, reverting to her former thesis. “I sometimes wonder if they want to get rid of me.” Her essay at melancholy was unconvincing. She hopped to the floor and stood by his side, drooping, again the appealing little maid of the earlier years. “Don’t you think I’m awfly young, Uncle Horace?”
“You do seem so, in a way,” he admitted uncertainly.
“Then couldn’t you give me a certificate or something?”
“A certificate?” he repeated uncertainly. “What kind of certificate?”
She was vague about it, herself. “You know. Something with a seal on it to say I’m not old enough yet to marry Mark. Something I can show Ma. You’re my doctor, aren’t you?” she argued.
Thus recalled to the professional aspect of the situation, Horace said bluntly, “That’s nonsense, you know, Dinty. The law of New York State establishes fourteen as the marriageable age for females.”
“I’m more than that,” she admitted lugubriously.
“I should think so, indeed.” He rubbed his nose. “How old are you, anyway, Dinty?”
“Sixteen,” said Dinty in a defiant voice. “Almost seventeen,” she appended, recklessly helping herself to some ten months.
“Then you didn’t tell me the truth when I first met you.”
“I might have fibbed a little,” she conceded, not looking at him. “Ma didn’t like my getting to be grown up. Neither did I—then.”
“Seventeen,” he muttered with a kind of incredulity.
“Almost,” she qualified. “I never wanted to be grown up for you because—well, because I thought you’d rather have me a little girl. I was afraid that when I grew up you wouldn’t like me so much. And now I do want to be grown up, only I’m kind of afraid. That’s funny, isn’t it? D’you remember how I used to try and find out things in your medical books? Anyway, I don’t like being old enough to marry Mark. Not a bit. Now will you help me?”
Horace summoned his resolution. “I can’t give you any such certificate,” he declared. “You are certainly old enough for marriage.”
“Do you think so?” she said in a half-breath.
“It isn’t a question of what I think. It’s a question of fact and law.”
“But do you think so?” she persisted.
“Yes, I do.”
She said in a mouse’s whisper, “Then why don’t you marry me, yourself, Uncle Horace?”
He stood up, feeling dizzy. “Me?” he said.
“Don’t you like me as much as you did Miss Agatha?”
“That dish of water gruel!” he said.
She gave her small crow of delight. “Oh, I did want you to say something like that!” She was twisting the third button of his broadcoat now. “After you found out she was like water gruel and stopped thinking about her, didn’t you ever think about me? Not just a little? That way, I mean.”
“I wouldn’t let myself,” he said with difficulty.
“Why not?” She was aggrieved.
“I’ve never been able to get over the idea of you as a child,” he confessed.
She lifted her eyes to him, and there was something in her look—the immemorial guile of sex—that made her seem for the moment as old as the wellsprings of life.
“Not even after we danced together?” she whispered.
The tilted face with half-closed eyes and tremulous mouth was a passionate invitation. He bent to her and it was a woman who came, warm and sweet, into his arms.
“Do you think I’m a little girl now?” she said triumphantly as she drew her lips slowly, reluctantly from his. “Do you, Uncle Horace?”
“What! That again?”
“Now you’re laughing at me. I don’t care. Do you know what I used to call you to myself?”
“No. What?”
“Doc. May I call you that after we’re married? When there’s nobody else around?”
“You may call me anything,” said the enamored young man.
Dinty reflected. “Ma is going to be awfly mad,” she decided. “Pa likes you, though. He’ll be glad.”
“So am I,” said Horace with fatuous fervor. “You’ll never know how glad. Though I don’t quite see why you want to marry me.”
Canal Town Page 30
