Canal Town

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

  “She’s certainly getting on. I didn’t realize she was that old. What about that young Southerner?”

  “Kinsey Hayne? Oh, he’s quite mad over her. I do think she’s stupid if she doesn’t marry him. I’ve told her so. I’ve told her that being married is wonderful after you get used to it. She is betrothed to him. But that’s a secret.”

  “That settles the matter then, doesn’t it?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Doesn’t Wealthia want to marry her young man?”

  “Not for a year, anyway, she says. That’s funny, I think. When I was betrothed to you, I wanted to be married to you right away.”

  “Ah, but think how fascinating I am,” said Horace blandly.

  “You needn’t be so vainglorious. You aren’t as handsome as Kinsey Hayne, and not half so pompous.” Her brows narrowed upon him. “Horace Amlie! I hope you don’t think you’re going to receive patients in that neckcloth. Why, it’s all rammidged along the fold. Take it off at once and give it to me to mend and put on your tartan one with the silver pin to hold it.”

  Properly abashed, Horace withdrew to carry out the command. When he came back Dinty said, “There’s a grown man, swinging on our gate.”

  Horace peered out. “That isn’t a man; it’s a teapot.”

  “A teapot?”

  “Yes. That’s poor old Dad Hinch. His nose is the spout and I have to look after him to make sure that it doesn’t get stopped up and steam him to death.”

  “Why, he must be crazy.”

  “No! Do you think so? That’s what the cookee on the Gypsy Maid thought when he brought Dad in and said that every time the galley fire was lighted he tried to sit on the stovelid. And now you confirm the opinion. Well, well! What a talent for diagnosis!”

  “Horace Amlie, I hate you! And I’m sure he isn’t safe to have around. He ought to be put away.”

  “Where, Dinty?” Horace’s face had become grave. “Do you know what happens to the insane poor? Either they’re chained up like wild animals or put in jail with nobody to look after them or feed them. There’s no other provision for them in this highly civilized age. Now would you like for me to enter complaint against Dad with the village trustees?”

  “No,” said Dinty hastily. “Do you think he’s hungry, Doc?”

  “No,” said Horace incautiously. “I’m sure he’s not.”

  She scrutinized his face with suspicion. How could he be so certain?

  “Horace Amlie! Are you supporting that man?”

  “Now, look, darling,” he pleaded. “The poor fellow is a war veteran. The nation he fought for won’t do a thing for him. My father was killed in Fourteen, you know. I can’t stand by and see a man of his regiment starve. He costs me almost nothing. And he mounts guard over Fleetfoot to see that the horse thieves don’t get her.”

  Dinty still felt that she must be stern about it. “First Unk Zeb and now this poor zany.”

  “Unk Zeb? Why, he’s worth his keep twice over.”

  “He’s a pig-headed old blackamore,” asserted Dinty who had not won the Battle of the Kitchen and established her authority without a grievous struggle.

  She opened the door and beckoned in the Human Teapot. He came to a stand, rigidly erect and with a military salute.

  “Respects, Missus,” he said. “Mornin’, Capting. Pressure’s down a bit this mornin’. If the steam gits too high,” he explained to Dinty in confidential tones, “I explodes. If it gets too low, I poofs out like a pricked bladder.”

  “This is Mrs. Amlie, Dad,” said Horace.

  “My obedience to you, ma’am. You got the finest man in seven counties and I hope you values him proper.”

  “I’m sure I do, Mr. Hinch,” said Dinty demurely and withdrew in response to her husband’s privately slanted eye.

  Though she had fought hard for the privilege, it was not permitted her to sit in on Horace’s consultations. Wise Dinty knew just about how far she could safely go with her usually amenable husband. Everything else in his life was open to her, but from his professional activities she was rigorously barred. Woman’s place, as she well understood, was in the parlor, church, ballroom, shop, kitchen, market, garden, anywhere but in the office. His utmost concession was that he would sometimes condescend to talk over his cases with her after the fact, though, even there, he employed that superior tone which man affected toward woman and the medical faculty toward the laity. He would have been scandalized to learn how much she really knew about his practice.

  Whatever criticism Araminta Amlie’s marital exuberances might have evoked among the sisterhood of the comfit, there was no question of her efficiency in the household. She was a housewife, born and bred. Her rooms were fresh with the fragrance of seasonal bloom, or spicy with the odors of roseleaf, bay and verbena. Her kitchen was immaculate, this being the principal casus belli between her and Unk Zeb, who adored her but could not be made to understand “Why mus’ she finnick ’bout a speck of dirt dat wooden’ make a gnat cry if you shev it into his eye, long as de food is tasty.” Tasty the product of Unk Zeb’s cookery certainly was; she had little to teach him there. Nevertheless it was her pumpkin pies that won an award at the town fair, that first fall.

  Withal she led a luxurious life. Seldom out of bed before seven, in the dark of winter mornings she would draw down the frosted window, light the fire in the new and costly hot-air stove, heat a copper kettle of water, drag her tub behind the modest concealment of a side curtain, in case her husband might be awake, which was improbable, have her bath, put on her rough crocus housework gown, and not until then rouse her sleeping partner.

  “Get up and take your bath, darling.”

  Grumbling—for he pretended not to appreciate his pampered state—Horace would roll out of bed into a pleasantly warmed atmosphere, and distrustfully contemplate the steaming tub. He was a firm believer in cleanliness, but he was no fanatic. Not another man in all Palmyra took a daily bath, except the Reverend Theron Strang who was of Spartan habit and was supposed to perform the rite as a mortification of the flesh. Horace had pointed this out to Dinty: why make a fetish of this soap-and-water business? Dinty made no reply in words; she merely sniffed the air like a hound dog. Horace gave in.

  On the theory that a man cannot do his proper day’s work on an empty stomach, she gave him a well-rounded though not extravagant breakfast: steak, sausage, ham, scrambled eggs, wheatcakes with syrup, muffins with butter and honey, pickles to spur digestion, and, when the weather was below zero, a dram of whisky in his Java. After that he might, on Sunday, have one cigar, but he must brush his teeth with chalk and powdered root afterward to get the odor off before church.

  Unk Zeb’s matutinal task was to clear the path to that chill and austere edifice which stood two rods back of the woodshed. Having warmed up a blanket and filled the footwarmer with red coals, Dinty wrapped her spouse’s shoulders against the wind, placed the heater in his hands, and gently impelled him into the winter morning.

  On his return he would find his beaver slicked to a nicety of gloss, his boots fresh greased, his fur gloves heating above the fire, and the full-skirted, richly sober coat of the professional class carefully brushed. His wife looked him over with critically approving eyes, adjusted his neck-pin at the correct angle, kissed him three times for luck on nose, chin and mouth and sent him forth on his visits, satisfied that no better-arrayed male, were it Silverhorn Ramsey himself, would grace the streets of Palmyra that day.

  After making the bed, redding up the house, and going over the household linen for blemishes, she went to the kitchen to let Unk Zeb understand that she had an eye on his dishwashing, an activity for which he had little enthusiasm. Her next task was to bring her barter list to date. A—Those duck eggs must be marketed by the end of the week; B—L. St. John might take the whisky off her hands at a price; C—She could make Unk Zeb a greatcoat out of that swatch of homespun, and what of it if it didn’t exactly fit; D—Mem. to inquire the store price of goosedown
, and the warehouse rate on flaxseed. Now she must change her gown, bearing in mind the dignity of her married status, preparatory to the tour of Main Street.

  She called Unk Zeb. With a shilling wickerwithe on his arm, and his ears, which were tender, wrapped in red flannel, he opened the door for her and toddled along, a respectful two paces in her wake. Later, but probably not until afternoon, he would attend her on her visits of charity or take her orders for homework while she attended some function of church aid. This was duty, but marketing was fun, a social diversion as well as a daily routine. At butcher’s, baker’s, maltster’s or chandler’s one met all one’s friends.

  Most of her contemporaries at the Polite Academy had married before Dinty, who was the youngest of the coterie, and were now quite obviously carrying out the Scriptural injunction as to fertility. On this crisp February morning, she met Happalonia Vallance Upcraft and Freegrace Fairlie Barnes, both bulging in loose garments. They told her that Clarissa Van Wie who had married De Witt G. Evernghim, was expecting any hour now, and that Bathsheba Levering was having a hard time keeping her breakfasts down. Dinty could feel their eyes fixed upon her with speculation. Or was it accusation as against one who was shirking her obvious duty? It annoyed her. What dratted business was it of theirs, anyway?

  She refused to admit to a conviction of guilt or evasion of obligation. She knew, as well as the next, what was expected of her, of all brides. Expanding America needed the increase; child-bearing was patriotism. The wife who faithfully produced, nine months from the wedding day, was esteemed as having made a worthy start on a promising career. The Reverend Strang, now the father of ten, had made cautious reference, lest he shock his hearers, to the Scriptural injunction, “Increase and multiply,” only last Sunday. Was he looking at the Amlie pew? Let him look! Dinty had her own views.

  “Hullo, Dinty!” That sweetly hoarse voice could belong to nobody other than Wealthia Latham.

  Dinty’s half-frozen little nose perked about as she looked for the source.

  “Here,” said Wealthia from the dark stairway leading up to Miss Deborah Blombright’s Emporium of Style. “I’m just going up. Come on.”

  Wealthia had returned from a visit to Syracuse whose salt works were building up a phenomenal population now that the canal opened up facilities for transportation. She was, her friend thought, looking unusually lovely, though a shadow of discontent lurked in the lustrous, dark eyes.

  “Oh, Wealthy! What a pompous pelisse!”

  “Seal’s fur,” said the rich man’s daughter complacently. “I’m tired of mink and ermine and those common, home-grown pelts.”

  “Is it awfly costly?”

  “Pa paid a hundred dollars for it in New York.”

  Dinty sighed. She had been wondering how long she would have to save her bee-money to have one like it. But—a hundred dollars! There was the note at the bank to be paid off before she could start the fund for the cobblestone house which would absorb all their possible savings for years. Sadly she put away the vision of herself, superb in a seal’s-fur longcoat, stalking regally through the carved oaken door. By that time she’d probably be old and withered and shapeless from the annual baby. Life was hard on the poor. Not that they were really poor; that was an ungrateful and sinful thought. Horace was going to be rich some day. Why, already his takings were more than a thousand dollars a year. She had much to be thankful for, thought Dinty, striving to force herself to a virtuous contentment.

  Wealthia’s trying-on having been completed with enviable elaboration, she said,

  “They’ve got a new stock of soda-powders at Stone-Front Sarcey’s. Let’s go have a fizzy syrup.”

  Mr. Sarcey proudly named his list of flavors: lemon, orange, currant or raspberry shrub, and the vanilla bean extract. Wealthia, always for the latest thing, chose vanilla; Dinty took raspberry. The fresh powder was of special potency and bubbled so high in the beautiful pale green glasses from the Royal Glass Factory at Deerfield that the froth got up their noses and impaired the elegance with which they had addressed themselves to the partaking. The proprietor left them to wait on another patron.

  Dinty asked her companion, “Did you see the girls outside?”

  “Yes. Disgusting.”

  Dinty laughed. “Natural, though.”

  “You, too?”

  “Not yet.” She crossed two fingers surreptitiously.

  “Aren’t you lucky!”

  The young wife’s smile might be taken to mean almost anything.

  “Does your husband want ’em?”

  “Oh, I suppose so. Some time. We don’t talk much about it.”

  “Men always do.”

  “Well, it’s no trouble to them,” said Dinty philosophically.

  “Let’s take a walk,” suggested Wealthia. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I feel so restless all the time. The village seems so small.”

  “We’re not small,” refuted Dinty indignantly. “We’re growing every day. Going on visits has given you uppity notions. You ought to be married.”

  “I suppose I shall, one of these days.”

  “You don’t seem very crazy about it. What’s the matter? Aren’t you sure of Kinsey?”

  “Oh, as for that!” The beauty tossed her proud head.

  “What is it you want to be sure of, then?”

  “Not looking like Happalonia and Freegrace,” answered Wealthia with a sort of sullenness. “I want to be pretty and have beautiful clothes and see people and places, and not settle down to being a bulgy old baby-factory.”

  “Wealthy!”

  “Well, look in there.” They had reached the bare grove in which the headstones of the Presbyterian churchyard thrust up through the snow. “Did you ever notice the arrangement of the family lots?” She went on passionately, “Look at them! One big stone for Father, three or four smaller ones for his wives, a lot of little markers. Deacon Smith and his wives, Sarah, Jane and Ann; Squire Jones and his lot of breeders, Ann, Jane and Sarah; Trustee Brown and his quartette, Mary, Jane, Sarah and Ann. All used up. Kill one with babies and take another. Wear her out and some other fool is ready and waiting. I hate marriage.”

  “Whatever’s got into you, Wealthy?” marveled her crony.

  “Oh, nothing much. I’ve been having too good a time, I presume.” She raised her face and the velvety luster of her eyes swept the slope at the foot of which huddled and smoldered Poverty’s Pinch. She lowered her voice. “Do you go to see Witch Crego?” she asked.

  “Once in a while. She’s a friend of mine.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t,” denied Dinty, purposely obtuse.

  “Do you believe she knows as much as people say?”

  “About what?”

  “You know. What we were talking of.”

  “People talk a lot about things they don’t know anything about.”

  “You needn’t be so superior just because you’re married,” complained Wealthia. “Oh, well, I suppose I’ll marry Kinsey and take my chances like the others,” she continued, reverting to her characteristic insouciance. “He is cruel handsome, isn’t he!”

  For some reason, obscure to herself, Dinty had not been wholly frank with her best friend. She had been to see Quaila Crego, shortly after her marriage. Quaila, with whom the girl was a favorite because of her friendship with the vanished Tip, had offered to read her fortune without pay. She began with the cards.

  The subject, she said, would be very happy in her marriage with Dr. Amlie, who was a stout man and kind of heart. Riches would be theirs, but only after a struggle. Yes, there was trouble intervening, bad trouble. A woman.”

  “A woman!” said Dinty wrathfully.

  “A dark woman. Dark and beautiful.”

  “Pooh!” said Dinty.

  “There’s no love card with her. But her influence is wove in with the hard times. Poverty follows close after her.”

  “I’m not afraid of poverty,” declared Dinty stur
dily.

  “You better not bear any children. Not at first. Not till the dark years are past. Life would only be that much harder.”

  “I’m in no hurry. But how can I help it?”

  “Did you ever hear of Satch Fammie?”

  The bearer of that curious name which Horace, in a moment of etymological inspiration had surmised to be a corruption of sage femme, was an itinerant midwife, alleged to be a Belgian gypsy and intermittently attached to one of the tenker bands that roved the roads. Dinty had heard of her as the possessor of unhallowed feminine lore.

  “She’ll be here soon,” pursued Quaila. “She knows all the secrets.”

  “More than you do?”

  “Certes. She’ll impart them to me for”—her shrewd, black eyes contemplated her visitor with speculation—“for five dollars, lawful money.”

  “Why don’t you pay it to her?”

  “Where would poor old Quaila find such a sum? Unless a rich, kind friend lent it.”

  “Two,” said Dinty who had foreseen this.

  “Four,” said Quaila.

  “Two-and-a-half,” said Dinty, “and that’s my last word.”

  The bargain was struck. Mistress Crego would buy the valuable lore to be passed on to her patroness.

  “Then you must come to me at the turn of each moon,” she directed. “But not a word to anyone, specially not to your husband, or I’ll have no truck with it.”

  “I promise,” said Dinty, impressed.

  She was not unduly superstitious. But when all three portents explicitly coincided, how could one be wholly skeptical? As to the dark woman, she was more interested than alarmed. Already she was serenely confident of her hold on her husband. And he was quite enough to fill her life without any accessions to the family.

  – 2 –

  Every lock-keeper was, by virtue of his opportunities, a purveyor of waterway news and gossip. Jim Cronkhite, his day’s duties at the upper lock completed, dropped in upon Horace after Dinty had gone to bed and to sleep. He had a gathering in his ear. After receiving directions for the placing of a hot cataplasm, and pocketing a bottle of medicine, he remarked, “Yawta been around Tooseday, Doc. What a turn-up!”