“Does he still hold out for measles?”
“Pretends to. I told him when the spots came out on his belly to fetch ’em around to me. He cursed me and stamped away.”
“He’s a hard man to move.”
“You should know. Anything more about the girl?”
Horace shook his head morosely.
“Look at it sensibly,” said his senior. “The girl has been pregnant. That much I allow as probable though unproven. She is no longer pregnant. Ergo, there has been an abortion or, more likely, a miscarriage.”
“Then I shan’t rest until I’ve proved it to Genter Latham.”
“And ruined the girl’s life?” said the old man gently.
“It needn’t go any further.”
“You know Genter Latham. He’ll turn her out like a strumpet.”
Horace’s face was haggard. “Haven’t I a right to think of my own future and my wife’s?”
“Ah, that’s a nice question. If it were a fair issue betwixt the two, I’d say yes. But I’ll be open with you, lad. It would be an uphill fight as long as you stayed here, with the most powerful element of the community against you.” He set a persuasive hand on the other’s arm. “Come to Rochester,” said he. “We’re a growing village with golden prospects. Already we have forged ahead of your Palmyra. There’s a brave opening for a knowledgeable young physician. Levi Ward is growing old. Thaddeus Smith is a discreditable and discredited scamp. I’m not as young as I was. We’ll get you reinstated by the State Medical in Genter Latham’s teeth. There lies your future, lad.”
“I won’t accept reinstatement on those terms. If I’m rounched out of here at the toe of Genter Latham’s boot, so help me God, I’ll never again practice medicine.”
Dr. Vought snorted like an enraged bullock. “Of all the double-damned, pigheaded, mush-brained sapwits!” he stormed, and stamped out into the garden to find Dinty and relieve his mind.
He had little comfort of her. Horace, she said with resignation, was that way, always had been that way, always would be that way. There was no use trying to change him. She ought to know, she added, having tried with uniform lack of success. Moreover, she didn’t want him changed. The old man snorted again and opined that there wasn’t one of ’em to mend the other.
Two days later she was up before the household and had gathered a dozen fresh-laid eggs for the breakfast omelette when a movement in the boundary hedge drew her attention. Silverhorn Ramsey’s face appeared. It was white and lined.
“I want the Doc,” he said.
“He isn’t up yet.”
“Get him up.”
“What’s happened?”
“She’s taken.”
“The fever?”
“Yes. It came on before daylight.”
“Are you sure it’s the fever?”
“The spots are all over her.” He shivered.
Dinty considered. “Does her father know?”
“How could I tell him? How could I let him know I’d been with her?”
“My husband won’t set foot in that house,” said she decisively. “You should know that, Captain Ramsey.”
“She may be dying,” he said brokenly.
Dinty took a resolution. “I’ll come, myself,” she said.
Silverhorn hesitated. “It’s dangerous,” he said with an effort.
“Somebody must tell Mr. Latham. Then, if he sends for Horace I might persuade him to come. Or Dr. Vought. He’s here, too.”
“That would be better,” said Silverhorn. “For God’s sake wake him.”
But Dinty knew her medical ethics too well for that. In the circumstances of strained relations, she explained, either physician would have to be called in by the head of the household. She set out for the stone house on the rise, accompanied by the canaller, who, as they approached the spot, slipped into a thicket to await further news.
An open window on the ground floor afforded the caller easy entry, Dinty tiptoed up the stairs and down the length of the hall, lifted the latch on Wealthia’s door, and pushed gently. It resisted. Bolted! Of course. It would be, since Silverhorn had been there. He must have made his exit by the porch pillar. Access by that route, however, would be too difficult even for Dinty’s practiced skill. She knocked on the door, at first lightly, then more insistently. There was no response. Setting her ear to the woodwork, she could hear a dim babbling.
Genter Latham must be called. She ran to his door and hammered with both fists. The bolt slipped; the door was swung wide. He stood before her in shift and nightcap, massive, surly, his eyes heavy with slumber.”
“What is it?” he demanded.
“Wealthy. I’m afraid she’s ill.”
He stared at her stupidly. “How come you here?”
Dinty was deft at improvisation. “Our dun heifer strayed. I followed her here and heard Wealthy crying out.”
He strode to the door and shook it, calling on his daughter’s name.
“Break it in,” Dinty urged. “She won’t answer you.”
For the first time, fear showed in his face. The woodwork crashed before him. Dinty followed him to the bed. Its occupant lay, sprawled and half nude. Between the firm, young breasts was a scattering of angry spots. The eyes were glazed, and only partly open. Genter Latham bent over the tossing figure.
“My dawtie! My dawtie!” he murmured. She gave no sign of hearing him.
“Don’t touch her,” warned Dinty, moistening the hot brow and neck.
The great eyes, sunken and red-rimmed but still lovely, opened wider, though with a vacant gaze. The lips parted to a sigh which would have merged into a name.
“Silv—” she began when Dinty’s swift hand pressed upon her mouth.
Genter Latham, distraught, asked not so much of Dinty as of any kindly powers that might aid, “What shall I do? What shall I do?”
“Dr. John Vought is at our house,” said Dinty.
It recalled him to practicality and authority. “Go and fetch him. Quick!”
“I am better here than you,” she returned calmly. “Do you go.”
Genter Latham ran from the room. Dr. Vought returned with him. One look sufficed the expert.
“It’s the true typhus,” he pronounced.
Genter Latham could hardly force his lips to form the words of his agonized question: “Will she die, Doctor? Will she die?”
“That no man can say yet.”
“I’ll give you a thousand dollars to save her,” he babbled. “I’ll give you two thousand, five thousand.”
“Man, man!” said the old physician pityingly. “Do you think your money can buy the life?”
On her way home, Dinty diverged to speak a word to Silverhorn Ramsey in his hiding place. He begged for a chance to see his love, if only for a word, but she pointed out the impossibility.
“It wouldn’t do you any good, anyhow,” she told him. “She wouldn’t know you.”
She tried to harden her heart against the groan that she heard as she moved on.
Horace received her angrily. He insisted, against her protests, in scrubbing her, himself, with contra-infectants until she thought her skin was coming off, and, as he scrubbed, he scolded.
“Haven’t the Lathams harmed us enough without your risking your life?” was the burden of his wrath.
“Oh, Doc, she’s so sick!” said Dinty. “I wish you’d go and see her.”
“I’ll go when I’m called and not before,” he retorted.
He was called. On the fourth day, Dr. Vought who had been unremitting in his devotion to the case chiefly on account of Dinty’s grief, said to the father, “This is going badly. I should like a consultation.”
“Send for anyone you want at any cost.”
“I should like to have Dr. Amlie.”
“No, by God!”
Dr. Vought shrugged. “Very well.”
In an hour the fever-scorched girl began to toss and babble again. Genter Latham broke down.
“Get Amli
e,” he snarled.
Horace came with a divided mind. He hoped to save the patient. He hoped also and ardently that, in the delirium which possessed most of her moments, she might reveal her secret in such unmistakable and definite form as to convince her father.
By the heroic and, as it was generally deemed, desperate resort of tepid baths, Wealthia’s temperature was reduced. She recognized those around her, and even had a weak smile for Horace. But at night the fever burned more hotly, and in the morning she was a desperately ill girl. Both physicians were there and the father when, in one of those accesses wherein “the intellectual power, through words and things, goes sounding on its dim and perilous way,” she began to speak clearly, coherently, consecutively under the stress of an unforgotten dread. She had been staring stony-eyed at Horace Amlie. Now she closed her eyes and spoke with a piteous intensity of defensiveness.
“It isn’t true! It isn’t true! It couldn’t be true. Don’t believe him, Pa. You don’t believe him, do you? You couldn’t believe that of me, not of your dawtie. How could he know? Nobody could know … Poor Kin! Poor Kin! He told Kin. Why did he tell Kin?” It died out in a rapid, muttering repetition, “Lies—lies—lies—lies …”
Horace’s face was ghastly. Dr. Vought was gazing at him with pity in his expression. Genter Latham twitched all over his powerful frame with the latent lust of murder.
A voice from the dead had accused the living. Wealthia Latham died as the sun went down.
– 18 –
People passing the stone mansion on the night of Wealthia’s death, heard Genter Latham’s dreadful voice crying out upon man and God. The two domestics fled the place in terror. By their report, the master was circling the floor of the room where his dead daughter lay, with a loaded musket on his arm, cursing and mouthing threats that he would kill Horace Amlie on sight. Squire Jerrold, his nearest friend, was turned from the door with brutal words.
The servants refused to return. All that night the light burned in the dead girl’s room where the father watched. In the morning a shawled and veiled figure walked up the kitchen path. Sarah Dorch quietly built the fire, put on a kettle to boil and got breakfast. She went to Wealthia’s chamber.
“Come, Genter,” she said. “You must eat.”
He stared at the ravaged face, rose and with a strange docility followed down the stairs. The meal finished, he returned to his vigil. Sarah ordered the house as best she was able and went to see Dominie Strang. Though Genter Latham had left the Presbyterian Church in dudgeon when its pastor sided with Horace Amlie, he had formed no other affiliation; accordingly the clergyman deemed himself still responsible for that racked soul.
“I’ll come at once,” said he.
He was received at first with dull hostility, then apathetically permitted to pray over the death bed, and to make arrangements for the services and burial.
In the Amlie home, after the return, there was hardly less unease than in the house of mourning. Dinty’s grief was distracted by her alarms for her husband. Through all their close-knit association, she had never before seen him in such a mood; so distraught, so possessed of dark and lost ruminations, so hedged away from her love and anxiety. Was he sickening for the pestilence? Frightened, she appealed to Dr. Vought. He relieved her more immediate fears.
“No, not the typhus,” he said.
“What is it, then?”
“It’s the mind, not the body.”
“He won’t talk to me,” she said pitifully.
“Nor to me,” said the old man. “I think he’s trying to nerve himself to some course of action.”
“But what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you have to go back to Rochester, Dr. Vought?” she made appeal.
“No. I’m staying over.”
By that she knew how seriously worried he, too, was. She was profoundly grateful.
At ten o’clock the guest yawned, consulted his watch, said he was for bed, and advised his junior to follow his example. Horace shook his head. He had some work to finish up, he said.
Dinty saw the old physician to his chamber and went to her own. Exhausted, she soon fell asleep. A cold splatter across the bed woke her. She ran to close the window against the storm and stood, stiffened. A broad, flickering sheet of radiance illuminated the path below. Upon it, Horace, bareheaded and coatless in the furious lash of the rain, paced with bent head. She stifled her instinct to call him. Some inner, wifely wisdom warned her that it was better to let him alone.
Lowering the window cautiously lest the sound of it reach his ears, she put on a wrap, drew up a chair, and sat watching in the intermittent revelation of the skies. Up and down he strode, up and down, heedless of the encompassing turmoil. A small, dead branch, torn loose by the gale, struck and staggered him. He threw it aside and resumed his patrol. She thought fearfully of him now as a creature possessed who, if he were startled, might well run away from her in panic and never return.
Soon his steps began to falter and slow down. Dinty crept downstairs, stirred the banked ashes in Unk Zeb’s oven to heat, and set on a pannikin of fresh water. It was steaming when Horace came into the house through the side entry. She mixed a toddy with the hot water and met him with it. He took and drank it gratefully.
“What are you doing up, Puss?” he said.
Voice and manner were relaxed, near to normal now. He was, she thought, like a man who, after wandering in mazes of doubt, had at last emerged upon the known road of decision. She kissed him and said in the best approximation to everyday tone that she could manage,
“Aren’t you silly, darling! You’re soaked to the skin. Come to bed.”
They woke to a day of freshness. The air had been vivified by the storm after heat. Dinty, correctly garbed in full mourning, visited the Latham mansion. She saw Genter Latham, but he would not talk to her. From Sarah Dorch she learned the time of the funeral, eight o’clock that evening. It was to be private. Nobody was invited. This was Genter Latham’s decision.
Dinty returned, a sad little figure in her habiliments of mourning, and took the safety-bath of vinegar-and-alcohol which Horace had ready for her.
“You couldn’t help but be sorry for Mr. Latham, Doc,” she said. “He looks like a man that has died inside.”
“Does he?” said Horace with a peculiar intonation.
“He’s so pitiful. I think he’s softened. If you want to see him soon, I believe it would be all right.”
“Do you?” said Horace. “Read that.”
He pushed a letter across the table to her. It was from Lawyer Upcraft notifying him that, unless he immediately delivered a formal undertaking to quit Palmyra within one week from date, he would be prosecuted to the extreme rigor of the law for malfeasance in office and the illegal practice of medicine. Appended was a list comprising every house visited by Horace during the epidemic. Dinty’s tearful eyes cleared and snapped.
“How hateful!” she cried. “Is that what’s been worrying you so, darling?”
Instantly his expression became closed, secretive. He did not answer. But she knew well enough that this was not the source of his troubles. He never brooded over a fight.
“Don’t you think I ought to go to the burial, Horace?” she asked, half expecting an objection.
“I thought it was private.”
“Mr. Latham won’t mind. I think he’d like to have me there. Tip will want to go, too.”
“Very well.”
Come death, grief and bereavement, nonetheless household routine must be maintained. Downtown on her marketing tour, Dinty picked up fragments of gossip. People were saying that Dr. Amlie had better look out for himself now. The dead girl, they said, had exerted a moderating and restraining influence over her father, and, because of her old friendship for Mrs. Amlie, had dissuaded him from extreme measures. Now, with that ameliorating factor gone, his ruthlessness would have no check. Taproom bets were offered that Horace Amlie would leave town or be in jail within the
week. Seething with indignation, Dinty bore her modest provender home.
That afternoon and evening packed more trouble, uncertainty and apprehension into a few short hours than would have sufficed to Dinty for a lifetime. The worst of it was that she could find no clue to set her upon any identifiable trail. Yet there was plenty to harrow her wifely soul with forebodings. For one thing, the normally chatty and contentious Dr. Vought either wandered in the garden or sat in glowering silence. And what was the matter with faithful Unk Zeb? But for lack of premonitory symptoms, Dinty would have diagnosed it as St. Vitus’s dance. It came on shortly after Horace had gone into the kitchen and held a brief, low-voiced talk with the old Negro. Thereafter Unk Zeb withdrew at intervals to mutter, shiver and finally to pray. At supper he dropped two plates and broke a water goblet.
The meal was a dreary function. Horace and his fellow practitioner were on prickly terms. Tip did what he could to enliven the occasion with sprightly discourse about life and learning in the classic shades of Hamilton College. It was a monologue. Had not her responsibilities as hostess restrained her, Dinty would have liked to jump up, give a loud yell and vanish into the evening shadows.
A sharp rat-tat-tat on the office door almost lifted her from her chair.
“Sit still,” Horace said sharply to Tip, who had risen to answer.
The host went out. They heard him giving directions of some sort. A hoarse voice responded,
“Right you are, Capting. I got my orders.”
Dad Hinch! But what part had the Human Teapot in these secret brewings?
At a quarter before eight the two young people set out for the cemetery. Only one carriage attended the body. It bore Genter Latham, the Reverend Theron Strang, Lawyer Upcraft and Sarah Dorch. The services were brief. Dinty’s quick eye caught a movement in a thicket above the grave. The coverage was too thick for identification of the furtive mourner, but Dinty thought that she knew who it was.
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