Canal Town

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

  “Now,” said Dinty, “let’s pretend you’re our brother and our parents are dead, so we have to look after you. You tell him, Wealthy.”

  “We think,” said the older girl with the confidence of one on her own special ground, “that your wardrobe needs replenishing.” (The phrase was borrowed from an advertisement in that week’s Sentinel.)

  “What’s wrong with it?” demanded Horace uneasily. He felt suddenly shabby.

  “Everything,” was the firm reply.

  He struggled feebly against the items put forward for his consideration by the two small invaders, but finally surrendered with a wry acceptance, which was partly anticipation. Horace found himself committed to the following outlay:

  14 yards velvet in three colors for pantaloons at 6 s, 6 d. yer y’d.

  ¾ y’d linings at 3 s.

  3 skeins silk at 6 s. 2 d.

  Thread, 4 d.

  Twist, 1 D.

  3 y’ds black supercloth for coat, $17.50.

  8 y’ds shirting for common wear at 1 s. 3 d. per y’d.

  6 y’ds shirting for church and social gatherings at 2 s. 6 d.

  Thread, 1 s. 3 d.

  Not until the bills came in did Horace realize how few dollars would be left in his reserve fund.

  So be it! At least he would be living up to his position, while the position lasted. And if his hopes collapsed, he would go down with colors flaunting, three pairs of velvet pantaloons, a skirted coat to challenge anybody’s eye, and a tartan neckcloth with brooch, not to be equaled short of Albany.

  “Besides,” said Dinty with an assurance which should have set him on guard, “you’re going to have heaps and heaps of calls pretty soon. Isn’t he, Wealthy?”

  Wealthia giggled and agreed. Horace muttered that he hoped so but saw no signs of it.

  He saw them soon enough. What amounted to a near-rush of trade set in. If it was not precisely the type to which his ambitions had looked, if none of the important inhabitants sought his skill in that first, inexplicable wave, if the cases were minor ailments at first, nevertheless the encouragement warmed Horace’s hopes. Hardly could he believe his eyes when he looked over the record of that first rush-day business.

  Item: Sammy Dorch had a sty. Lanced. Item: Linzy, the maltster’s apprentice, wambled in with his throat bound in red flannel and goose-grease. Cupped. Item: Bub Jones, horse-boy at the Exchange Hotel, brought for inspection a ripe black eye. Leeched. Item: O. Daggett’s two nieces, having overstuffed at the Methodist Church festival, were constipated. Purged. Item: Sally Moore, hen-hussey for the Leverings, came weeping over a felon on her finger. Opened and dressed. Item: Mindus Adams had a toothache but shrank from an extraction. Ether-paint. Items: sundry slivers, scratches and scarifications from Poverty’s Pinch where anything that broke the skin was typically followed by inflammation. Salved, patched and bandaged. All of it fell short of a lucrative practice. But, if continued, it would give the young doctor enough work to do to keep him from brooding, and enhance his first-hand acquaintance with the ills that flesh is heir to, which, as Dr. Vought used to assert, was the better fifty per centum of medical education.

  The second day was even better than the first. After dismissing the last patient, Horace walked down to the cobbler’s shop to tell him of the improved status.

  “That’s the way to get ’em!” approved Decker Jessup.

  “What way?” Horace failed to understand.

  “Advertise.”

  “Quacks advertise. I’d scorn to do it.”

  “Say!” Decker Jessup jeered. “D’you see anything the matter with my eyes?”

  Horace felt the first, faint stirrings of uneasiness. “What have your eyes been seeing?”

  “You wait here till school’s out and you’ll see it with your own peepers.”

  Persuasion could get nothing more out of him but a series of deep chuckles and a reference to O. Daggett being a dab at a quick job.

  Horace had not long to wait. Far down Main Street he saw a horse shy and move hastily over to the curb. The cause hove in sight. Down the middle of the highway marched four of the little Sunbeams, two-and-two. They bore, upright and extended, a placard boldly lettered in O. Daggett’s most flagrant style. At first the script danced before Horace’s vision, but presently took on form and legibility.

  “Hey!” said Decker Jessup, alarmed. “What’s the matter? Took sick?”

  Horace uttered an anguished yelp. This is what he read:

  Are You Sick or Ailing?

  COME & BE CURED

  by

  DR. AMLIE M.D.

  The Best Doctor in Town.

  No Cure No Pay

  Horace struggled manfully against a devastating fury which, he told himself, was as unreasonable as it was futile. Plainly this was Dinty’s doing, poor Dinty whose intentions were always of the best.

  He went forth to a bloodless victory. The parade was dispersed without disorder. Dinty did not understand, but one look at her adored doctor’s face apprised her that the occasion was unpropitious for protest or question. She scuttled, and after her scuttled the other Little Sunbeams.

  – 10 –

  I know Something I won’t tell.

  Doctor A. and Aggie L.

  (DINTY’S DIARY)

  Behold now a new Dr. Horace Amlie, illumining the sedate streets of Palmyra with his splendency. The high-wheeled gig, decorously drawn by Fleetfoot, was a glowing spectacle with its dark-blue caduceus against cream-yellow—O. Daggett had outdone himself for friendship’s sake—its crimson running gear picked out with white, and its slender, beribboned whip curving in the socket. At the side of the occupant his saddlebox was strapped to the iron seat-stanchions by the thongs whose normal use was to hold it to the saddle when he mounted Fleetfoot for such excursions as took him upon paths not negotiable by wheels. It was fitted with twelve featherglass vials for the tinctures, eight tin canisters for powders and pellets, and, in the opposite compartment, his obstetrical outfit, dental forceps, lancets, probes, and stethoscope.

  Emotion swelled Dinty’s Dosom thus to see him in his glory. For, was not this her handiwork; hers and Wealthia’s? She felt within her the ineffable thrill of creation. Dr. Horace, in his full regalia, was, indeed, she proudly told herself, a pompous sight.

  Dinty’s was not the only heart to be flustered by the pleasing apparition. Miss Agatha Levering, passing on some worthy errand, observed, blushed, and took a decision. Dr. Amlie was invited to the Levering mansion to supper. Thereafter, in rapid sequence, Dr. Amlie became a regular caller, and was presently installed as the Levering family consultant, vice Dr. Murchison, dismissed. There were phases of the young man’s character which fell short of Levering standards, to be sure. In religious matters, he was a loose, if not a free, thinker. He had explicitly declined to take the Total Abstinence pledge. It was known that he raced his mare, believed in free education, and, though a sound enough Clintonian, admired the rabble-rousing scoundrel, Andy Jackson. But he was obviously a Rising Young Man. And Daughter Agatha was going on twenty.

  The maiden’s attitude toward her suitor—for, as such, the village now regarded him—was one of modest and flattering deference. With docile eyes she consulted him on a wide variety of lay problems, from the spicing of preserves to the hue of a hair ribbon. In a score of subtle ways she made him feel his masculine superiority. But if he so much as essayed to hold her hand, she quivered away with a look of panic.

  Horace tingled with frustration. The painfully extreme propriety and restraint of courtship on so elevated a plane was rasping his nerves. What ailed the girl? Wasn’t she human? If ever he did marry her, he grimly warranted his soul, he would resolve that chilling correctitude. Or could he? Or any other man? Still—it was better to marry than to burn.

  Fires by no means hymeneal cast their heat ahead from another quarter. Horace saw, in his copy of The Register, the announcement of the Lyceum Company’s deferred engagement, to be fulfilled on the last three evenings of Oc
tober, but a fortnight away. The vision of Sylvia Sartie brightened with unseemly radiance in his mind.

  Horace’s twenty-second birthday was on the nineteenth. There came to his office on the anniversary morning a package tied with festal ribbons and bearing the inscription, “Friendship’s Offering.” Within was a sampler in cool colors, pink and pale blue, worked by Miss Levering’s own fair hands. It was beautiful craftsmanship. The motto which it presented was impeccable in taste and morals, and garnished with a Scriptural text which had no connection with St. Paul. Such is the froward and irreclaimable spirit of man that, when he had hung it on his wall opposite Dinty’s similar gift, he found himself preferring the amateurish to the expert performance. Notwithstanding, he wrote Agatha a letter of gratitude, embellished with recondite verbal elegances and apt quotations.

  Though unable to divine why Dr. Amlie had taken so amiss the Little Sunbeams’ attempt to improve his financial circumstances, Dinty and Wealthia had deemed it prudent to keep away for a few days and let his wrath simmer down. When Dinty estimated that the cooling-off process ought to be sufficiently advanced for safety, she presented herself at the office, bearing as peace offering a basket of herbs and simples which she and Tip Crego had gathered the night before.

  “In the full of the moon,” she informed the recipient.

  “That gives them special virtue, I suppose.”

  “Of course. You must always cull herbs in the full and hunt treasure in the dark of the moon. Everybody knows that.”

  “Are you still up to those night-wandering tricks of yours? What would your parents say?”

  “Oh, they’d have conniption fits. What they don’t know won’t hurt ’em.”

  “Is that honest, Dinty?”

  The small, plump face took on a pathetic cast. “If I didn’t get to go out once in awhile I’d bust. Mistress Crego told Tip I had gypsy blood in me, and when the night calls, the blood has got to answer. Don’t you ever feel that way? Didn’t you ever run on All Hallowe’en?”

  “When I was your age I suppose I did.”

  “Hallowe’en’s different, though. That isn’t like woods-running. All the boys and girls come out then and some of the grown-up folks. You must hang a candle-punkin or a colored glass ball in your window for a witchguard. Wouldn’t you like to come out with us just a little while?” she coaxed.

  Horace declined politely. He had an engagement which he did not deem it necessary to mention to his young friend. Hallowe’en would close the local run of the Lyceum troupe, and Miss Sylvia Sartie would be free till the following morning.

  Had there been a local item column in the press of the day, it would have chronicled that Dr. Horace Amlie was a first-nighter at the rendition of The Spectre Bridegroom, a second-nighter at the presentation of How to Die for Love and a third-nighter at the gala performance of The Road to Ruin. Had there been a gossip column (as there was, not so much later), it might have reported that a Certain Young Medico was seen supping with a Dainty Daughter of Thespis after the drop of the curtain. The consistory of the blacksmith shop, where such news was canvassed, avidly discussed both reunions and recalled the former acquaintance between the young people. Whatever the effect upon Horace’s reputation in more lofty circles, among these avowedly virile citizens it was enhanced. They approved him as a rollicking blade. They recalled and recounted their own amorous adventures in personal experiences of which the zest was equaled only by the inventiveness, until the Quaker spirit of Silas Bewar revolted and he bade them either curb their tongues or befoul some other air than that of a decent smithy.

  The unquenchable Carlisle Sneed started an appropriate ditty:

  The woodpecker flew

  From his nest, in the night

  And the red on his noddle

  Was shining and bright—

  when an ominous movement on the smith’s part caused him to complete the air by whistling.

  Nine o’clock was bedtime for the respectable except on social occasions when the hour might be extended to ten. Eleven of All Saint’s Eve had struck on the tall clock with wooden works in the Jerrolds’ stair-embrasure, when the mistress of the household raised her head from the pillow and pushed an elbow into her husband’s ribs.

  “Hark!”

  A whippoorwill was sounding its impatient, insistent call somewhere very near.

  “Whatsa matter?” grumbled Squire Jerrold.

  “It’s on our roof.”

  “What if it is?”

  “Oh, Archibald! Don’t you know it’s a sign of death to someone underneath when a whippoorwill sings on the rooftree?” she quavered.

  Her husband turned his better ear to the window. “Kiss the cow good-bye, then,” he said. “That bird is on the barn.” He settled down. “Go back to sleep,” he grunted and set the example.

  In her chamber below, Dinty slipped from her rope bed and put on her shoes. Otherwise she was fully clothed. After listening for any sign of vigilance above, she let herself down from the low window.

  “I thought you were never coming, Tip.”

  “It wasn’t easy, giving the slip to the others.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Presbyterian churchyard.”

  “Oo—oo—oo! Aren’t you scared?”

  “What of?”

  “Ghosts. Witches. It’s almost midnight.”

  “I’d like to see a ghost,” said the boy seriously. “That’s what we’re going for. Besides, we’ll be ghosts, ourselves.”

  He brought out their regalia, a pair of head-sized pumpkins, two hop-poles, and two sheets ravished from the clothesline of some unwary housewife who had forgotten that it was a night of license and depredations.

  “If you aren’t scared, I’m not, either,” declared Dinty more stoutly than truthfully. “You’ll have to do the talking if we see one,” she added in prudent afterthought.

  They took position in an alder copse to await the mystic hour when some unresting spirit might elect to return to earth. Tip was for old Capt. Jabez Wheeler, a Lake Ontario skipper whose profanity was so awful that it was credited with bringing on the gale in which he and his crew had perished. Dinty’s selection lay beneath one of the ancient skull-and-bones granites, an ill-reputed Dame Mitchin who was suspected of having poisoned in rapid succession her husband’s dog, his pig, and himself, and known to have died later by her own potion. It would be interesting, though terrifying, Dinty thought, if the old miscreant would rise up and make confession.

  The watchers did not have to wait for midnight. Two dark figures materialized from nowhere among the graves. Low voices reached their ears. Shivering, Dinty clutched her companion.

  “It’s them!”

  “Those aren’t ghosts. They’re folks,” whispered Tip.

  “Who?”

  “I can’t see. It’s too dark.”

  “Let’s run.”

  “No. I’m going to haunt ’em if nothing else does.”

  Horace Amlie was talking, low and nervously, to the girl at his side as they entered the silence and darkness beneath the trees. He was not feeling very comfortable. If not wholly inexperienced, he was no libertine, no practiced Don Juan. But the pressure of Sylvia Sartie’s arm in his, the soft warmth of her body were stimulating. He wondered whether he dared try to smuggle her into his rooms; how she would receive such a suggestion. His whispered broaching of the subject was halting and equivocal.

  There was nothing equivocal about her kiss. Nor about the welkin-rending shriek that interrupted it. Miss Sartie’s soprano may have been heard to better advantage but never in fuller volume nor inspired of more emotional stress. A white and wavery apparition had risen to monstrous height before her horrified eyes and was advancing upon her and her companion. Frantically tearing herself from his embrace, she sprinted for the lights of Main Street and the world of the living as fast as a pair of sturdy legs would bear her.

  Horace, startled and angry, made a grab at the ghost. The hop-pole dipped. The sheeting shimm
ered to the ground. Tip Crego’s dismayed voice said,

  “Oh, Dr. Amlie! I didn’t know it was you.”

  Wondering how much the boy had seen, Horace said lamely, “I was escorting Miss Sartie to look at the tombstones.”

  “Did we scare her?” asked Tip.

  “You apparently did,” answered Horace grimly.

  The second ghost sidled up. It said in Dinty’s most demure manner,

  “Good evening, Dr. Amlie.”

  “Good evening.”

  “He was showing Miss Sartie the tombstones,” explained Tip.

  “I think that’s very nice and hospitable of him,” said Dinty.

  Horace glared at her. In what little light there was, her uplifted, innocently admiring face seemed to bespeak a guileless soul, incapable of sardonic suppressions.

  “You ought to be in bed,” said he shortly.

  For once Dinty was meek. “I’ll go if you say so,” she murmured. “Come on, Tip. We’ve got to put the sheets back. Yours is pesky muddy.”

  All the ardor had oozed out of the adventure for Horace. Inclination pointed him homeward. Gallantry, however, prescribed that he should make at least the motions of following up his inamorata. He set out for the Eagle. As he approached, there came from the open window of an upper chamber the high-pitched whoops of hysteria. Dr. Gail Murchison brushed past him and hastened through the doorway. Horace turned his steps to his lonely bed in Canandaigua Road.

  Timidity in human relations had no place in Dinty Jerrold’s make-up. Nevertheless she approached her daily errand of neatness at the Harte house with some misgivings the next day. Would her Doctor cherish resentment toward her for last night’s prank? He entered while she was conscientiously, albeit unenthusiastically dusting Miss Agatha Levering’s sampler.

  “Well, young lady!”

  So that was all right! She had been afraid he was going to call her Araminta. She said courteously (having rehearsed it for the best effect),

  “I trust that Miss Sartie is none the worse for her alarms.”