Only one person in all Palmyra was bold enough to approach the great man on the matter. Elder Strang, with a lively distaste for his errand, called at the Latham mansion. Genter Latham listened to him with a darkening face, but patiently, for he respected the parson.
“Are you impugning my daughter’s modesty?” he asked.
“Say, rather, her light and capricious carriage, about which there has been much talk.”
“Send the talkers to me.”
“That would profit nothing. Wealthia is of my flock. I hold myself responsible for her soul’s welfare.” There was no doubting the clergyman’s sincerity and concern.
“My daughter’s virtue is safe in her own keeping,” said Mr. Latham courteously but firmly. “She has been carefully and modestly brought up. Mr. Kinsey Hayne, moreover, is a gentleman of honor.”
“I make no doubt of it. Nevertheless, youth and hot blood,” said the Reverend Mr. Strang sadly, “are an ever-present snare.”
There the matter ended. The pastor had fulfilled his responsibility. As long as the father apprehended no harm from the association, the pastor loyally did what he could to stifle the talk.
The day came for the Southerner’s long departure. He would not see his lady-love again for at least three months. Wealthia came to the Amlies’ to bid him good-bye. They walked long in the garden. When she came in, her eyes were reddened.
“I wish he were taking me with him,” said she to her chum.
“Would you have gone?”
“Oh, so willingly!”
“You’ve changed your tune, Wealthy.”
“Everything will be so different with Kin gone.”
Dinty hummed pensively, “What’s this dull town to me?”
“As long as he’s here, I feel so safe.”
“Safe against what?” asked Dinty, wide-eyed.
“Nothing. I don’t know why I said that.”
“You are afraid of something, Wealthy.”
“No, I’m not. What should I have to be afraid of? What are you doing this afternoon?”
“Taking some medicines and victuals to old Gammer Pennock down at the Pinch.”
“I’m feeling blue-spirited. I’ll walk along with you.” On the way, she said, “Remember the Little Sunbeams? Do you come down here often?”
“There are a few people Horace likes me to look after.”
“Have you ever seen the gypsy woman they call Satch Fammie?”
Dinty stopped short. “What do you know of Satch Fammie?”
“Nothing. But I’d like to.”
“Why?”
The beauty smiled. “Well, I’m to be married and it might be convenient to know some of the things they say she knows.”
This seemed reasonable enough. “She doesn’t stay at the Pinch,” said Dinty. “Only stops over to see Mistress Crego.”
“Ask Crego to let you know when she’s coming again.”
Dinty nodded. “But don’t you want to have children ever, Wealthy? I do.”
“Oh, I guess so,” was the careless reply. “But not for a while. I want to stay pretty and show the Southern belles what we York State young ladies are like.”
She went on to chat about plantation life as Kinsey had described it to her, and to outline an elaborate wardrobe, calculated to take the wind out of the feminine sails of South Carolina. In the middle of a sentence, she stopped. A distant bugle was blowing a flourish to the lower lock with the purity of tone which only one mouth could achieve.
Blood surged up beneath the girl’s dark skin to the roots of the luxuriant hair, only to recede as swiftly. The lovely face became blank, blind, rigid. The lips were stiff, from between which issued a soundless whisper. Not until the clear melody had died in echoes from the far hills did she regain self-control.
“I’m a fool,” she said. “Don’t mind me. I’ll be all right now.” Dinty said soberly, “Wealthy, I’m worried.”
“You needn’t be. Forget all about it. I’m going to forget.” She became vehement. “I love Kinsey. I do love him. I’m going to marry him. I wish we were married now. I’m going to marry him and go to South Carolina where I’ll be safe, and never come back.”
“Never come back!” cried Dinty in dismay.
“I mustn’t.” The pallor returned to her face, which again grew rapt, lost. “For, if I heard his bugle at night,” she whispered like one speaking with a power upon her, “I’d leave my marriage-bed to go to him. I’d rise from my grave to answer his call.”
– 3 –
Never of a studious bent, Wealthia Latham now evinced a tendency to bookishness which amused and puzzled Horace. Her interest was specifically medical. While Dinty was doing her housework and Horace was out on calls, the girl would curl up in the office chair and pore over the pages of De Weese, Burns, Gregory, Hosack, and other authorities on female derangements.
“What’s she doing it for?” the physician asked his wife.
Dinty passed along the explanation given to her by her friend. “A Southern lady has to look after the health of the whole plantation,” she said. “Wealthy’s got to know how to take care of the blackamore women when there’s no doctor handy.”
“Very praiseworthy,” commented Horace, but he said it dubiously.
The matter was still latent in his mind when Genter Latham’s manservant came with a message; would Dr. Amlie call, at his convenience?
Never before had Horace seen the great man in such mood. He was nervous, depressed, uncertain of himself, and strangely reluctant to approach the matter for which he had summoned Horace.
Horace waited. After several lapses in the conversation, Mr. Latham rose, went to the window, then beckoned the visitor over.
“Look at her!” he said, his voice vibrant with pride. “Can you show me her like in ten counties?”
Wealthia Latham, shears in hand and wicker-weave on arm, was gathering blooms for the house. Her exquisite face, half shaded by the broad straw “scoop-shovel,” was somber. When she came to the little pavilion at the entrance to the rose circle, she set down her basket and, leaning against a pillar, stared out into nothingness. With her face in repose, its likeness to her father’s was accentuated; that same arrogance and self-will, the same pride and passion, gross in the man, refined to beauty in the girl.
“Is that like her?” muttered Mr. Latham. “What makes her look that way, Amlie? What ails her?”
“I am not prepared to give a professional opinion,” said Horace.
“Why not?”
“I have no basis for a diagnosis.”
“That’s true. I won’t have her worried. As I am,” he added.
“Are you sure you’re not magnifying unimportant indications, Mr. Latham?”
The great man left the window and let his bulk slump heavily into the desk-chair. He drummed with a pencil. Without raising his eyes he said,
“Her mother, my beloved wife, died of lung fever. It began at exactly her age.”
“Have you observed any symptoms?”
“She coughs at night.”
“Probably a touch of the influenza.”
“When I ask her, she says it is nothing. Sometimes I have thought she was weeping.”
A vision, at once ludicrous and pathetic, came to his hearer’s mind; this rugged, undemonstrative man, in carpet slippers and nightcap, creeping to the beloved child’s door, listening, dreading what he might hear.
“Has she anything on her mind that you are aware of?”
“She knows about her poor mother. I think she fears that she is going the same way, but is too brave to tell me.”
“Isn’t it possible, sir, that you are allowing your affection for Wealthia to exaggerate your fears?”
“She is all I have.”
“There are no external signs of the decline,” pronounced Horace, using the euphemistic term in preference to “the consumption.”
“What do you think of her? The truth, Amlie.”
“She has seemed to me ve
ry gay and spirited.”
“You saw her just now. Was she gay and spirited?”
“No.”
“That is how I see her when she is not on her guard.”
“Mr. Latham, the vapors of a young girl in love, when separated from the object of her passion after the excitements of close contact, often manifest obscure phases. I am speaking plainly.”
“That is what I expect of you. You are convinced that that is all?”
“Not convinced. Lacking a thorough examination, I can offer only theory.”
“Then make an examination.”
“Very well. Send Wealthia to my office at five o’clock this afternoon.”
“Do it now. Here.”
“It will be more satisfactory at my office.”
“Who’s paying for this?” Mr. Latham was his autocratic self again.
“You are paying for the best opinion I can give,” returned Horace patiently but with firmness. “If you want a superficial diagnosis, call in someone else.”
“By God, I will!”
“Good day, Mr. Latham.”
“No, no! Wait.” The black humor drained from his face. “There’s no one else here I can trust. You’re pigheaded, damn you, but you’re honest.”
“Mr. Latham,” said Horace earnestly and kindly, “you are causing yourself needless suffering. I can all but warrant that there is nothing seriously amiss with your daughter’s lungs.”
“I’d like to believe you, Amlie. I’d give half my fortune to believe you. I’ve got such a dread of it.” He tapped his great chest. “She shall be there at five o’clock.”
Certainly Wealthia showed no evidences of wasting disease when she presented herself at Horace’s private consultation room. She was in one of her gayer moods and laughed at the physician’s professionally serious mien.
“There isn’t anything the matter with me,” she asserted. “Not a thing.”
“Your father …”
“Oh, Pa! Pa’s an old fussbuddle where I’m concerned. If I sneeze, he thinks I’m dying.”
“You don’t appear to be losing weight.”
“Of course I’m not.”
“The night-cough of which he speaks …”
“There isn’t any night-cough.”
He put further and more intimate questions, under which she became at first restive, then resentful.
“I don’t know why I should be pestered and harstled this way,” she complained.
“I don’t mean to harstle you, Wealthia. I am merely trying to carry out my instructions.”
“What are your instructions?”
“Among other things, to make a physical examination, if I think it needful.”
“Well, you shan’t,” she flashed. “I think it’s horrible of you to mention such a thing.”
Blocked here, Horace could only report to the father that, as far as he could ascertain, there was no cause for alarm. He could tell that Mr. Latham, though relieved, was not wholly satisfied. Horace’s own opinion was that Wealthia, in an impressionable and nervous state from her betrothal, had been reading too many medical treatises and, under their influence, had magnified some petty functional derangement out of all reason. For treatment, he resorted to the usual tonic of spring herbs: saxifrage, rhubarb and colewort.
There remained another source of diagnosis, Dinty’s powers of observation and analysis.
“Has Mr. Latham always fretted over Wealthia like this?” he began.
“Ever since I can remember.”
“Do you think there’s anything really wrong with her?” he asked bluntly.
“No; I don’t. Why should there be?”
“Is she worrying about herself?”
“Where do you get your funny ideas, darling? There’s nothing for her to worry about.”
“She could read herself into almost any symptoms out of those medical books of mine,” said he thoughtfully.
“I don’t believe there’s a thing in it,” declared Dinty.
She assumed more confidence than she felt, for she was sensible of an indefinable change in her friend. It seemed to her to date from the night of the barn-raising at Manchester. This was at the back of her mind as she added thoughtfully,
“If I were Kin Hayne, I’d come back here quickly and fetch a wedding ring with me.”
Horace laughed at her. “The bride’s panacea.”
“Don’t be horrid,” said Dinty loftily.
It developed that Kinsey Hayne was coming back, though not with the appurtenance which Dinty had suggested. Some business had unexpectedly summoned him to Albany, and he was continuing his way west in time for the first large social function of the summer, the Canal Ball at the Eagle Tavern.
This, while a very high-toned affair, had a commercial angle. It was given by the warehousemen and shippers in honor of the Erie captains, upon whose good will they depended for careful handling and prompt delivery of their consignments. It was to be a fete of great formality and elegance. Even the experienced Wealthia was agog about it, and looked forward to Kinsey Hayne’s escort with as much apparent eagerness as the most jealous love could demand.
Dinty, to her vast satisfaction, received her first official honor as having attained the estate of matronhood, by being appointed to the Ladies’ Receiving Line. She wheedled Horace, who was quite unable to resist her persuasions, into letting her order a new gown at Miss Blombright’s, and spent her spare moments in practicing languor of demeanor.
It was difficult to maintain this studied neutrality in the face of the splendors and gayeties of the occasion. Not only was all the local aristocracy present, but the uppercrust of the Erie had crowded the basins to capacity and, with their womenfolk, contributed the luster of their various uniforms. Now that Dinty was hors de combat, Wealthia Latham was undisputed queen of the spinsters, and was looking, so thought her admiring friend, a picture of careless and confident loveliness.
That was at the outset. A few moments later Dinty, catching a glimpse of her face, saw that all life and gayety had drained out of it. Puzzled and alarmed, she feared that the girl might have been taken ill or faint. A familiar and gay voice from down the line distracted her attention, and, turning, she recognized the reason for Wealthia’s discomposure.
Captain Silverhorn Ramsey was advancing along the line. On his arm was his new wife, an elderly crone (to Dinty’s young eyes) who would never again see thirty-five. She was arrayed in an overpowering elegance of black satin and lace, and sparkled with gems. The voice in which she acknowledged the committee greeting was a throaty caw, and the eyes which she kept fastened upon her handsome spouse glittered with suspicion and possessiveness. Silverhorn, plainly on his best behavior, appeared quite subdued, but his glance was vagrant, and Dinty knew too well the object of its range.
Wealthia had noted his presence before he discerned her in a group of ardent admirers. He made no effort to break in upon it, but devoted himself exclusively to his wife. Soon Wealthia recovered her gayety which waxed to a quite reckless pitch, as she distributed her smiles and little coquetries broadcast. Was she trying to make her fiancé jealous? Or did her purposes go farther afield? Dinty suspected that the courtly Southerner, for all his infatuation, would hardly be a safe person to play fast and loose with.
Soon or later the Ramseys were bound to come into some contact, were it only the most casual, with Wealthia. The encounter occurred in the middle of the evening and on the floor. Silverhorn had been dancing with his wife. Up to this time he had partnered no one else. At the close of the measure, he came face to face with Wealthia. He bowed low and gracefully. The girl barely responded, but Dinty saw her eyes swerve and was shocked to read in them a sort of desperation. Mrs. Ramsey put a query in a not-too-subdued squawk and he replied offhandedly. The episode was over.
At the intermission Wealthia escaped from her court and drew Dinty aside. Her face was strained, her regard unsteady.
“Dinty, you’ve got to do something for me.”
“What?”
“I want to speak to Captain Ramsey.”
“I shan’t have anything to do with it,” pronounced Dinty with matronly severity.
“Please! It’s terribly important. Just for a minute.”
“Don’t be a silly goose. What would Kinsey think? Why must you see him?”
“He’s been writing me letters. I—I want to tell him to stop.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“No. That wouldn’t do any good.”
“How could you talk with him here? Be reasonable.”
“Then you must give him a message. Tell him I’ve got to see him some time, somewhere, right away.”
“I won’t do any such thing.”
“I hate you,” said Wealthia. “I hate everything. I wish you were all dead.”
Dinty, waiting for her to recover her poise, came to a decision. She would take matters into her own hands. Why not? Was she not, as an experienced married woman, in duty bound to protect her ignorant and reckless friend? Wealthia was now looking contrite for her passionate outbreak.
“Let’s go get a glass of the elderberry punch,” said Dinty. “That will refresh your spirits.”
She led her friend to the “ladies’ bowl,” where, while she was about it, she took two small glasses to Wealthia’s one, by way of fortifying her soul for the coming interview. As the Entertainment Committee had augmented the light, sweet wine with a considerable admixture of cordial, Dinty, who was little accustomed to spirituous experiment, felt a gently pleasurable tingle in her nerve-ends.
By the exercise of major strategy Captain Ramsey had managed to slip the custody of his wife and was talking to Dr. Amlie about a threatening manifestation in Rochester of a malady of typhous nature which he thought might prove the dread spotted fever. Up came Dinty.
“You haven’t asked me to dance once,” she accused her husband, with her best combination of pout and smile.
“I didn’t venture to abstract you from your official duties,” he replied.
“Let me repair the negligence,” put in Silverhorn gallantly. “Will you honor me with the next dance, Mistress Amlie?”
“With great pleasure, if my husband permits.” This was working out well.
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