“Don’t you, truly?” Again she reckoned the points on her fingers, reclaiming her hands from his for the purpose. “To get out of having to marry Mark. And to show the family I can’t be told off. And because I think it will be very pompous to be Mrs. Doctor Amlie. And because you’re going to be rich and successful—now you’re looking like a bear with a sore tail. Oh, well,” she grinned elfishly, like the old Dinty, “because it gives me the shivers to even think of marrying anyone else. And because you’re cruel handsome and I—I guess it must be the tender passion, after all. Now, are you satisfied?”
Having been convinced that he was, she drew away again. “Think of being married before Wealthy,” she purred.
“Lord save us! It’s a child, after all,” said Horace.
“Wait till you see me running your house. We’ll have banquet parties and sociables and entertain the Commissioners when they come to Palmyra.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “Will you build a room for me to have for my very own?”
“No,” said Horace.
“I don’t care,” said Dinty.
It was to be a short engagement. Dinty was deaf to parental suggestions that they wait until her seventeenth birthday. “I’m quite old enough. My doctor says so,” said she complacently.
Was she really that old? Sometimes he found it hard to believe. There was, for example, the evening when, calling on his little betrothed, he found her immersed in a solid tome which she at first tried to conceal, then put on the parlor table with an affectation of ease, before lifting her face for his kiss.
“More Gilpin, sweetheart?” he asked.
“No. I’m trying to learn something.”
He scrutinized the title: A Reproof to Heedless Youth, together with a System of Correspondence Tending to Matrimony, by Dr. G. B. Champlin.
“Are you Heedless Youth?” he inquired fondly.
“No,” replied Dinty, making a prim mouth. “I am studying to become a helpful and prudent wife to you, Dr. Amlie.”
“Helpful and prudent,” he repeated suspiciously. “Is that you or Dr. Champlin?”
Dinty reverted to type. “He’s a silly writer. It’s a cheaty book. It doesn’t tell you anything about matrimony except how to get a husband and I’ve already done that for myself.” She gave him an enchanting smile.
“What did you expect? What did you want to find out?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said Dinty hastily.
On the morning of the wedding ceremony, which was celebrated pompously, as the Herald put it with many other flattering characterizations, Dinty had a brief moment with her groom. They exchanged commonplaces. Last-moment, pre-marital conversations are usually of that order. But, as he said good-bye with an attemptedly humorous request that she would not be late, she looked down at her new prunella shoes and said in a strained voice,
“It’s kind of scary. I don’t know much of anything about this, you know, Uncle Horace.”
So he was “Uncle Horace” to her still!
Seated very upright beside her bridegroom in the freshly painted gig, Dinty bade a brave farewell to family and friends. It would take them three hours to reach Canandaigua, which was to be their stopping place for the night. They arrived in good time for supper, washed up, and went down to what proved a neurotically conversational meal. Horace insisted upon her eating everything on the list with a solicitude which inevitably brought to mind an almost forgotten narrative about the last meal of a condemned criminal.
After prolongation could extend the rite no further, Dinty remarked in a high-pitched, mannery trill that Canandaigua was noted for its scenic beauties and this would be a fine opportunity to enjoy them. Horace agreed. They made a slow tour of the town and exchanged views upon the charm of the lake in the moonlight.
Even the most improving interchange of ideas eventually exhausts itself. The Presbyterian clock was announcing nine, in what seemed to Dinty unusually solemn tones, when they found themselves back at the inn. They ascended the steps in military unison and silence. It was broken in the hallway by the bride who stopped, absorbed in a wall placard which, in ordinary circumstances, would have lacked fascination, since it was no more than an announcement of improvements established by a new and enterprising proprietor.
“He hopes,” stated the poster, “to Merit the Favor of his Friends and the Publick generally, by his Conduct to one and all. No noisy Rabbles will be allowed in his House whereby the Rest of the Weary may be Disturbed.”
Below this reassuring message, a long-fingered hand pointed blackly to the word SPECIAL.
“A Bath with Fixed Tin Tub has been Installed on the Second Floor for the Refreshment of Patrons. Hot Water and Towel on Request.”
“Isn’t that dicty!” exclaimed Dinty with bright ease of manner.
“How fortunate that we’re on the second floor! I’m awfly dusty. I think I’ll take a bath.”
“Why don’t you?” said Horace with equally studied nonchalance. He yawned elaborately. “And I’ll go to bed.”
Hot water and towel were commanded. Dinty went out into the hall, closing the door behind her. At her left hand a window opened invitingly upon a porch roof. Subconsciously she had noted from outside its slender pillars, easy of access and quite simple for an active little girl to shin down. Little girl? What little girl? She sternly reminded herself that she was a married lady.
In her bath she gave herself over to perturbed and inconclusive speculations. One could not remain in a Fixed Tin Tub all night. She climbed out and dried herself with particularity. Somehow, by a process which was quite apart from plan or volition, she found herself completely re-clothed even to her serviceable traveling shoes. They were fine, stout gear, fit for any road, sturdy enough to walk all the way home in. She could get there before daylight.
She tiptoed back the length of the hall and paused before the window, listening. No sound from behind the door. Perhaps he was asleep already. A perfumed breeze bellied out the paper curtain which subsided with a motion like a gesture of invitation to the world of freedom and escape. The well-loved world of night and the open tugged at her nerve-strings. She could be out and down to earth and safe in a minute, a half minute.
And Unc—and her (gulp) husband?
Dinty drew her knee back from the window ledge. She fetched a long, tremulous breath. Her favorite apothegm fortified her soul.
“You never can tell till you try,” she murmured resolutely.
Her eyes lambent, her chin high, she opened the chamber door and made a valorous entrance.
For their honeymoon trip they made a conscientious survey of the state as far east as the capital. They visited the highest span in the world across the chasm at Portage, the wonders of Niagara, the mighty Aqueduct over the Genesee, the Bishop Museum in Rochester, the Longest Bridge in America, spanning the Cayuga marshes, the Hamilton College campus, overbrooding the majestic Valley of the Oriskany, the Capitol at Albany, and the State Prison at Auburn. In all they covered four hundred and fifty-five miles and their expense account, as set down in the bride’s conscientious ledger, came to twenty-one dollars and sixty-five cents, which was extravagant, indeed, but perhaps not too much so considering that it included, besides the tolls and hotel bills, three attendances on the drama, admittance to a circus, tickets to a benefit cotillion where Dinty, much in demand, would dance with nobody but her bridegroom, sixpence apiece for a visit to the prison, a medical lecture at Fairfield, and the shillings for two successive Sunday contribution plates. It was on the day of return that the bride summed up her impressions in a line which she did not show to her husband until long afterward.
“Marriage is an Honorable Estate but full of Surprizes.”
It is the last entry in Dinty’s Diary.
PART TWO
– 1 –
Scandal attached to the Amlie household before the marriage was a sixmonth old. It was common talk at the sewing bee that the couple acted toward one another more like a pair of flighty lovers in a dra
ma than like decent wedded folk. Mrs. Amlie frequently addressed her husband by his given name when company was present. In private, it was alleged, she called him “Doc.” They had been heard to exchange endearing epithets, such as “darling” and “my sweet.” Their laughter at meals was audible to passers-by.
“She jests with him,” said Mrs. Van Wie.
“Worse! She coquettes with him,” charged Mrs. Dillard.
“As if wedlock were not a serious matter,” said Mrs. Levering.
“Not to her,” said Mrs. Upcraft. “At least, there’s no sign of it yet.” She glanced with pride at the distended frontage of her daughter-in-law, Happalonia, whose marriage antedated the Amlie nuptials by less than three months.
“A high-minded and uppity minx,” declared Mrs. Harte. She had never forgiven Dinty for improving upon her housewifery in the days when the young physician was her lodger. “Piano lessons at ten dollars a quarter!”
“And tachygraphy,” put in Mrs. Sam’l Drake. “She’s taking instructions in the Gurney Method of Swift-Writing. They say she’s learning both the Angular and the Waving-Running hands.”
Mrs. Upcraft sniffed. “So’s she can assist her husband in his medical writings. I’m told some of his notions are very queer.”
“And she reads all his medical books,” said Mrs. Dillard with pursed lips.
“Indecent,” snapped Mrs. T. Lay. “That’s what I call it.”
“It’ll do his name and practice no good,” darkly prophesied Mrs. Upcraft.
The meeting solemnly decided that flighty little Araminta Jerrold’s influence had wrought in her husband an alteration such as nobody would have believed, and that such brazen levity of conduct on the part of the couple was a shameful example for the young. Old Miss Bathsheba Eddy alone lifted a dissenting voice, if, indeed, “lifted” be a proper term for the wistful murmur in which she said,
“They do seem so happy.”
“What’s being happy got to do with it?” barked Mrs. Upcraft. “As if folks married to be happy! Why doesn’t she ever come to the sewings and help the heathen?”
“Oh, she’s ‘too busy,’ ” minced Mrs. Drake.
“Busy at what, I’d admire to know,” said Mrs. Levering. “No good, I’ll be bound.”
A glimpse of the young wife at that very moment would have confirmed the circle’s unfavorable opinion. She was perched upon the office table, one leg tucked beneath her, the other swinging free.
“Six months,” said she. “Six months since I’ve been a respectable married lady.”
“You don’t look it,” said Horace. Which was true. She suggested, rather, a cheerful and dainty young gnome.
“Sometimes I don’t feel like it at all. Then, again, I do. It isn’t so bad, once you get used to it,” she added in the manner of one making a concession.
“Oh, it isn’t, isn’t it!” he commented. “Well, this is my busy day.”
“Who’d have thought it!” Dinty looked pointedly about the empty room. “Oh, I know there’ll be a passel of patients crowding in on the overworked doctor pretty soon.” Her regard passed to the tall clock with real brass works, making its solemn measurements. “But you’ve got ten minutes yet.” She leaned forward to rub her cheek against his. As he cast an apprehensive glance at the door, “Oh, there’s nobody there. And what if there was?”
“We must remember our position.”
Dinty’s curved lips produced a sound delicately reminiscent of Silverhorn Ramsey’s gardaloo. “Is it against the law in Palmyra to be in love with your husband?” she demanded.
“No. But …”
“Oh, Doc! Don’t be so dumb. Do you love me or don’t you?”
“That’s a highly improper question,” said Horace, “considering that I promised to. In church, too. I’m a man of my word, but …”
“I don’t want any more ‘buts’ and I won’t have any.” She kissed him firmly. “Oh, I know what the old comfit-munchers say about us. I just don’t care. Do you?”
“Not a deacon’s damn,” grinned Horace.
She looked at him sidewise. “Do they joke you about it? The men, I mean.”
“Sometimes.”
Indeed, among his cronies of the smithy, there had been for a time the customary nods and becks and wreathed smiles, all of which he took in good part, until Carlisle Sneed unleashed a decidedly ill-advised witticism on the subject and was disagreeably surprised to find his jest and his head submerged in Silas Bewar’s waterbutt.
Subsequent humor was of a more subdued nature. Horace had taken on bulk and muscle since his advent in town, without corresponding lack of activity. He was now a fair match for any man of that sturdy company, except perhaps the mighty 200-pound Quaker, himself.
“Let ’em all tend their own pigs,” said Dinty comfortably, hopping to the floor. “Now that that’s settled, I shall be Mrs. Doctor Horace Amlie, M.D., with all the frills and furbelows. How’s the state of our barter this morning?”
“That’s your department. Go and see.”
Market-book and crayon in hand, young Mrs. Amlie let herself into the storeroom which she had insisted upon her husband’s building to accommodate his receipts in kind. There she noted down seven bushels of wheat, four of rye, as many of oats, a firkin of pickles, another of whisky, a keg of hard cider, three bags of feathers, a horn of powder, ten pecks of that always movable commodity, flaxseed, four dozen eggs, and three yards of coarse homespun. There were also potatoes, pumpkins, squash, a ripe melon, a hollowed log filled with hickory nuts, some pelts from trapper patients, herbs from the Pinch, a brace of fine, fat, live geese, and eight dead blackbirds which she set aside for a pie. The lot should tot up, if properly marketed (and there were few folk shrewder at knowing and getting the best price than the young wife), to close upon twenty dollars. She went back into the office.
“Doc, we’re getting rich.”
“We’re not doing badly.”
“Will you build me that round-stone house?”
“Some day.”
“With a carved oaken door and leaded eagles in the sideglass?”
“What pompous ideas we’re getting!”
“I’ve always had ’em. What d’you think I married you for?”
“Lest a worse thing befall you,” he chuckled.
“If you mean Marcus Dillard, I’d have had my stone house already. But when I get it, I’d rather have you in it than him.”
“Thank you!”
“And we’ll have a glass flower-porch, and a pianoforte, and I’ll put Gibson’s Balm of Roses on my face every day to smell sweet, and we’ll have wine for Saturday supper, and dine the bigbugs when they come to town. Darling, how much do you owe at Mr. Latham’s bank?”
“Not very much.”
“I’ll wager it’s a pizen lot. A thousand dollars?”
“No-o-o.”
“Well, how much?” she persisted. “Seven hundred? Eight hundred?”
“There or thereabouts.”
“Say nine hundred and interest,” said she shrewdly.
He sighed. “I thought I’d married a wife, but it proved to be Professor Montgomery’s Marvelous Computing Machine; Ten Cents Admittance.”
“I’m going to pay it off twenty-five dollars every month,” said she firmly. “I don’t like debt. Doc, I’m afraid Pa owes Mr. Latham a lot of money. I know he’s worrying over something. He doesn’t look hearty at all. I wish you’d go and see him.”
“And have your mother freeze me out of the house, as she did last time I went there without your protection? No, thank you!”
“You married trouble when you married me, didn’t you, darling?”
“Well, I expected it,” said he with a martyred air which changed to one of bland magnanimity as he added, “Not but what I consider you worth it at times.”
“Thank you for nothing.” She bobbed him a curtsey. “Sometimes I don’t feel married to you a bit. It all seems so queer.”
“Sometimes,” he capped her,
“you seem to me like the bad little Tillie Tomboy who made me blush by asking me questions about Burns on Abortion.”
“I don’t have to ask you any more. I’ve read Burns and De Weese and Rush and Hosack and all of ’em.” She flourished a gesture toward the rows of learned volumes above. “I know all about my insides and your insides and everybody’s insides,” she bragged.
“Maybe you’d be willing to take over my practice, Miss Wise-eyes.”
“I’ll warrant I’d make more money out of it than you do,” retorted the practical Dinty. “Look at that advertisement you inserted in the paper about vaccination. ‘Immigrants and Indigents Inoculated Free.’ Is that the way to build a stone house with an oaken door?”
He sighed. “If they can’t pay, they can’t.”
Instantly contrite, Dinty gave him a quick hug. “I know, darling. You can’t help being that way. I wouldn’t want you any other way. But I truly think it would have been better for you to marry a rich lady.”
“Which one?” asked Horace with animated interest.
She looked solemnly up at him beneath the long, dark lashes which accentuated the blue of the eyes below. “Why didn’t you fall in love with Wealthy instead of me?”
“What chance did you give me?” said Horace reasonably.
“Now you’re trying to shame me. Well, you needn’t to try! I’m not ashamed and you can’t make me be. How else would I have got you, I’d like to know! You never would have asked me first, old Slowpoke. And if you ever say you’re sorry I’ll—I’ll take all the medicines in the chest and die in horrid convulsions.”
“Come, now!” protested Horace. “Medicines cost money.” Observing signs of a gathering storm, he decided that he had gone far enough. “When I feel symptoms of regret coming on,” said he, “I’ll write you a letter in the palsied hand of extreme age—I’ll be ninety or a hundred by the time I start getting tired of you—and tell you so.”
Dinty made a small noise like a contented cat. “Think of my being married before Wealthy!” she remarked. “Why, Doc, she’s eighteen!”
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