She pressed her hands over her eyes. “But—but—there’s something else; another reason. Oh, Tip! Are you sure?”
“Hasn’t she always been mad over him? Have you forgotten that day under the hill? Aunt Quaila knows when this happened. It was a year ago last spring.”
“The barn-raising at Manchester!” exclaimed Dinty. She remembered that telltale straw embedded in the black tresses.
Tip nodded. “Wealthia ran away from the party and met Silverhorn in a loft. It had been fixed up between them beforehand. Mr. Hayne followed and brought her back. I don’t know where he found her nor what kind of story she made up for him. Wealthy’s slick as a mink when she’s so minded. He couldn’t have known about Silverhorn.”
“Oh, poor Kin! Poor, poor Kin!” mourned Dinty.
If Tip was right, in what a different pattern the whole involved and pitiful tragedy unrolled itself! Kinsey guiltless, Wealthia at first afraid to confess to him, though too honorable to marry him while carrying on the intrigue with the canaller, for doubtless the intimacy had been repeated. Cornered because of Horace’s quixotic and ill-inspired visit to Kinsey with a view to setting matters aright, she was forced into her confession. It drove him to suicide.
“But Silverhorn couldn’t …” No, she was not going into that with Tip. “Where’s the child?” she demanded.
“Maybe she went away and had it fixed. There are others besides Satch Fammie,” said Tip darkly.
Dinty bethought her of the Syracuse visit. But Horace had discovered her condition since then.
“She hasn’t been away,” she asserted. “And she couldn’t have it done here in Palmyra without somebody knowing.”
“I don’t understand it then,” he confessed. “But you can see now why I want to tell the Doctor about it.”
“Never! You mustn’t. I won’t let you.”
“Why not?” he asked, amazed at her vehemence.
“Tip,” she said tightly, “if you breathe a word of it to Doc, I’ll never forgive you. You don’t know how awful it would be.”
“No, I don’t. You’d better tell me.”
“Tip, Doc has made a terrible mistake. When he found that Wealthy was pregnant, he went straight to Kinsey Hayne to make him marry her. When Kin denied it and called him a liar for scandalizing Wealthy’s good name, there was an awful row. Then she must have owned up to Kin or anyway told him she couldn’t marry him. He wrote a letter to my husband.”
“What did it say?”
“I never dared ask. Doc burned it. It made him very sad. I think he was disappointed in Kin. You see, he was so sure that Kin was the father.”
“But wouldn’t Mr. Hayne have denied it?”
“You never can tell about those Southerners. They’re so lofty-minded about women. Maybe he thought it would be easier for Wealthia if he took the blame. I don’t know just how much he did know, but Wealthia must have told him something. Enough to drive him to suicide. So, when he killed himself, that was absolute proof to Doc that he was responsible for Wealthy’s condition and wasn’t man enough to marry her. If Doc learned the truth now, I don’t know what it would do to him. He’d blame himself for poor Kin’s death.”
“There’s no sense in that,” objected Tip. “Wouldn’t Mr. Hayne have done it, anyway?”
“Of course he would. He was so mad over Wealthy. But you don’t know my Doc. Nothing would ever persuade him that it wasn’t his fault. With all the rest he’s got on his mind, it would drive him crazy.”
Impressed, the boy said, “You know best, Dinty. I’m sorry I told you.”
“No. It’s a good thing you did.”
“Why?”
“I can have it out now with Wealthy. I’ve been wanting to get the truth out of her for ever so long.”
At the stone house she found her friend packing a hamper of charities, to take to Poverty’s Pinch, one of the good works to which she was increasingly devoting herself. Dinty said,
“Can anyone hear us?”
The girl’s eyes widened in alarm. “No. What is it? Has something happened?”
“Nothing.” She set her two strong young hands on the other’s shoulders. Of the two she seemed now immeasurably the older and firmer. “Wealthy Latham,” she said, “I want the truth from you.”
The beauty cringed away, twisting in the grip of the hands, turning her face to avoid the solemn and searching eyes.
“This is dead secret,” Dinty went on. “I’ll never breathe a word.” She reverted to the formula of solemn childhood. “Cross my heart and double-die. I won’t even tell Doc. But I’m going to have the truth from you, Wealthy. Was it Silverhorn Ramsey?”
Wealthia quivered like an animal. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Where is the baby?”
“There isn’t any.”
“Don’t lie to me. Or”—her voice softened—“did it die?”
“No. There never was any.”
“Wealthy!”
“There wasn’t! There wasn’t! There wasn’t! It’s God’s truth. I thought there was. I was sure of it. For months. Oh, Dinty, what a hell in life I lived! I wanted to die. Then—nothing.”
“You didn’t get rid of it?”
“I swear in God’s name, I didn’t. Nobody would help me. I was almost crazy. And then—it was all a mistake. God was better to me than I deserved,” she went on humbly. “Oh, Dinty! I’ve been such a wicked little fool! But I couldn’t help myself. I’d do it all again if he came back. That’s why I must never see him again. How can I make you understand?” She broke the hold of those imperative hands and threw herself into a chair, convulsed. “I don’t care whether you believe me or not,” she sobbed. “It’s true, every word of it.”
Dinty had to believe her. She was appalled. Where did that leave her adored Doc? And what of that theory of sterility to which he had pinned his faith? Dinty’s brain whirled.
– 15 –
Winter loomed, a grisly threat to the Amlies. With the closing of canal traffic, Horace’s source of income stopped. They could still live. Unk Zeb had accumulated a noble woodpile; there was no danger of freezing. Dinty’s industrious chickens, the family cow and sundry barrels containing salted pork, pickled eels and Lake Ontario sturgeon, insured them against hunger. But other expenses must be met with cash. They faced a harshly straitened future.
Horace was fretful. He had tried his hand at odds and ends of employment, only to find himself blocked by the Latham influence. Dinty found him one day in his empty and chilly office, poring over an advertisement clipped from the local weekly.
We are in want of a good post rider to circulate our paper through Macedon, Port Gibson, etc. We seek an apprentice who is disposed to be industrious—to abhor and shun the haunts of vice and the company of obscene and pilfering youth—and who would detest the idea of embezzling his employer’s money. Opposite characters need not apply. We are heartily sick of them and will not keep them. Good encouragement will be given to the right individual.
GRANDIN & TUCKER, Proprs.
“Just the thing for Tip!” said Dinty enthusiastically. Horace looked hastily away from her smile. “I wasn’t thinking of it for Tip.”
“Doc!” she cried in dismay. “You couldn’t.”
“It’s honest employment,” he pointed out. “It would fetch in cash, not much, but regular. And—” he forced a grin—“Fleetfoot needs exercise.”
“But, Doc,” she wailed. “Post riding! A man of your learning!”
“We’ve got to live, Puss. The question is whether they’ll give me the job.”
“They’d better be proud to have you.”
“Genter Latham owns a share in the paper.”
“I wish he was dead!”
“Unfortunately, I’ve never seen him looking better. He is now forwarding a movement to vote Dominie Strang out of his pulpit.”
“Because he stuck by us,” said his wife bitterly. “How hateful! Can he do that, Horace?”
“He can do almost an
ything in this town,” returned he gloomily.
Her chin went up. “Except drive us out.”
“He’ll never stop trying.”
In his shiny coat, but with boots polished, and neckcloth trimly set, Horace called at the newspaper office. Messrs. Grandin and Tucker exhibited surprise, succeeded by caution. Dr. Amlie’s application would be taken under advisement, and he would be informed later. Horace understood with a sinking heart that they wished to assure themselves against objections by their backer.
No such objections were advanced. Mr. Latham remarked, with his grimmest smile, that it was just about what the young squib was fit for, and added that if he were found some morning in a snowdrift, Palmyra would be none the worse for it.
Horace entered upon the rigorous duties of post riding, growing thinner, hardier, more withdrawn from everyone but Dinty, day by day. Tip Crego had been dispatched to Hamilton College where, thanks to his mentor’s tutelage, he was admitted without difficulty.
February of 1824 was a terrible month. Blizzards closed the roads for days at a time. Horace’s earnings declined to the vanishing point. Unable to cover his route on horseback, he took to snowshoes. He was stormbound in an abandoned woodcutter’s hut overnight and came stumbling home, burning with fever. He made his own diagnosis—pneumonia. To Dinty’s terrified plea that she be allowed to call in Dr. Murchison, he returned a flat negative.
“I’d rather die with my blood still in my veins,” said he, and when she failed to suppress a frightened cry, added with grim determination, “I’m not going to die, Puss. Not and leave a certain bit of business unsettled.”
No explanation was needed as to what the certain piece of business was.
Before he fell into unconsciousness he gave her full directions for his care. Friends rallied to them. Quaila Crego moved in, bag and baggage, to act as nurse. Gwenny Jump, prosperous on the traffic of the Settlement, brought daily delicacies and was hurt when Dinty, as tactfully as she could, declined the offer of a loan. The brotherhood of the smithy was represented openly by the more upstanding element, such as Silas Bewar, O. Daggett, Decker Jessup and Carlisle Sneed, and secretly by the timider souls whose offerings Unk Zeb found on the doorstep of mornings. That stout old son of God, Elder Strang, was a regular visitor and helped buoy Dinty’s spirits when the prospect looked blackest.
Between devoted nursing, exemption from medical attention, his hardy constitution, and a dogged determination to survive, Horace pulled through. Convalescent, he was a handful. Although the disease had left him much depleted, it took all his wife’s management to prevent his going back on the road. If he did not work, he argued, how were they to manage. There was the interest on the note to meet, and after that the town tax. Could they live without money? Dinty answered that she could but that she couldn’t live without him, and that she wasn’t going to let him go out and work himself into a relapse. He must be patient and wait for the opening of the canal. Then they would be all right again.
What galled him worst was the constant appeal of old patients. They crawled or tottered to his door, the sick, the injured, the frightened, begging his aid. It was futile to refer them to Murchison; they had faith only in their Dr. Amlie. So he took the most importunate or unfortunate of them back. He could treat them, gratis, and still be within the law. But how could he afford to dispense the medicines that they so needed? Driven to the risk by their necessities, he accepted pay for some of his drugs. An information was laid against him. Upon the procurement of the Board of Censors he was haled into court and mulcted in the considerable sum of five dollars, with an alternative of ten days in jail.
Dinty quivered from head to foot when haggardly he confessed his imprudence and its direful consequence. Five dollars! Where was she to find it? There was but one recourse, the picklejar which in the days of their carefree prosperity had grown heavy with her pin money, now the hold-all of the household finances. It contained barely enough to cover the interest which came due with such shocking and pitiless regularity.
“I may as well go to jail,” said poor Horace in the depths of contrition. “I’ll be just as much use to you in jail as out.”
She cried out at that. Let Genter Latham gloat over him? For she had no doubt that the magnate was the one who had fomented the charge. Not while there was a dollar in the hoard!
A week before the due-date Horace, still weak and crotchety, was summoning resolution to crawl out of his warm bed into the dank chill of the room, Dinty having long been busy about breakfast, when his heart stirred to the lilt of her voice in that little, absurd song of happiness which he had not heard for long.
Lavender’s blue, diddle-diddle.
Lavender’s green.
When I am king, diddle-diddle,
You shall be queen.
He dressed in haste and came out to find his wife smiling behind the coffee urn which was exhaling a not very coffee-like aroma of parched and roasted oats.
“What are you so cheery about?”
She jumped up, slipped around the table, and kissed him. “I’ve had a—er—communication,” said she importantly.
“Who from?”
“Guess.”
“I can’t guess,” he said dispiritedly.
“Neither can I,” she returned with a trill of laughter. “Look!” She flaunted before his incredulous eyes five greenbacks.
“What are those?” he demanded.
“Forty-two dollars, lawful money,” she gurgled. “Enough for the interest and four shillings over to buy you a new neckcloth.”
He scowled. “Where did it come from?”
“I—don’t—know. There’s the cover they came in. Unk Zeb found it under the door this morning.”
Horace peered at the oblong of folded paper with the broken wax along the edge. It bore, in stiff, unidentifiable capitals, the legend, “Mrs. Horace Amlie, Present.”
“So there’s no mistake about it.” She caroled,
Lavender’s green.
When I am king, diddle-diddle …
“Charity,” he said hoarsely.
She stopped dead. “I don’t care. It’s money.”
“Not our money. You must send it back.”
“Where?”
That stumped him. “We haven’t fallen that low,” he said, but with less conviction. “Whom do you suspect?”
She looked as innocent as a baby. “I haven’t a notion to bless myself with.”
This was not the precise truth. On the previous night, she had heard soft footsteps. And in the morning she had found clear footprints. The heels were delicate and fine; finer than anything of Decker Jessup’s facture. But why follow up the clue? Look so timely a gift horse in the mouth? Not Dinty! Nor would she mention her suspicion to Horace, who was in one of his resentful and stiff-necked moods. It was a boon from Heaven, that benefaction. To question or refuse it would be akin to impiety; certainly base ingratitude. If Wealthia Latham chose to appease her conscience by secret offerings, far be it from Dinty to thwart so helpful an intent. Horace, though, was still feebly conscientious or, as Dinty put it, pernickety.
“We’d better set it aside till we find out,” said he.
At this, Dinty’s wifely spirit of obedience broke. There was an unwonted fire in the blue depths of the eyes that were turned upon him.
“And what about the interest?” she asked with ominous quiet.
“Haven’t we enough for that?”
“You know we haven’t. Not since your fine was paid.”
“I don’t care,” he shouted. “Throw the damned things into the fire.”
She caught the precious notes to her bosom and stood at bay. “You’d let your wife be turned into the street by Genter Latham’s bank?”
“Oh, do as you like!” he groaned.
It was well along in April when the Amlie batteau, extra-loaded with equipment and medicaments, took the water when there was barely the depth to float its shallow draft.
Harsh spring weather b
eset and slowed the trip. Dinty, worrying at home, grew anxious as a week passed into ten days, and ten days into a fortnight with no Horace and only such casual word of him as she could cull by frequent visits to the locks which were the circulating media of canal news.
On the seventeenth day he stamped up the steps, whistling untunefully, a manifestation which lifted the wife’s heart. It was a token of satisfaction with life which she had not heard for weary months. He bustled in, enveloped her in a bear-grip which heaved her slight form clear of the floor and kissed her hungrily a dozen times. Reaching for the cash-bag at his belt, he tossed it blithely into the air. It fell to the table with a heartening bang and jingle.
“Count that,” he ordered, turning again to her.
“How can I when you’re hugging me?” she protested. “Behave yourself, darling.”
With his arm still around her, she sorted out bills and specie. Wonderment grew to awe as she passed the twenty-dollar mark. At thirty she stopped and kissed him again. At thirty-three she detected a dollar-note which, she suspected, was less current than it should be, and set it aside. Without it the count came to an imposing total of thirty-six dollars and some odd coppers.
“Darling,” she said with a catch of the breath. “We’re rich.”
“We’re liable to be.”
“And you’re well again. And happy. Aren’t you?”
“Who wouldn’t be, with such a wife! I feel like my own man again.”
“You’re not,” she retorted jealously. “You’re mine. Oh, Doc! Isn’t it dicty to be alive! Let’s go and throw a rock through Genter Latham’s window.”
“Have you seen Wealthia?”
“Twice. She’s been here.”
He looked at her with lifted brows of interrogation. She shook her head. That was as near as they now approached the subject which lay, imbedded and irritant like a foreign substance, in both minds.
Prosperity continued to smile on the Amlies, while politics worked underground. Genter Latham had acquired influence in the reconstituted Canal Commission. Early in June the blow fell.
Canal Town Page 48
