Captain Ramsey’s dancing was a model of decorum. At the end of the number he suggested a bit of refreshment, which fell in perfectly with her ideas. What she had taken of the punch, while pleasant and invigorating, had fallen short of its full duties as incitement to positive action. She was glad to see that her escort, returning to the quiet corner which he had found for them, bore in either hand a jorum of extra capacity. Thanking him prettily, she drew at the straws with dainty appreciation which was mingled with surprise as she observed how much character the beverage had taken on since her earlier sampling. She reduced the contents of the glass by a good quarter.
Absently she realized that Captain Ramsey was paying her some pretty compliments. Pleasant enough, but her mind was on matters weightier than flattery. How to open this delicate and difficult subject? He saved her further trouble.
“You have a message for me. Haven’t you?” he asked silkily.
“Yes,” said Dinty. “That is, no.”
“I’m sure you mean yes.”
Another cool and delicious pull at the straws inspired her to the attack direct. “Captain Ramsey, why can’t you let Wealthia alone?”
He said dolorously, “She hasn’t so much as looked at me, the whole mortal evening.” Then, below his breath, “I can’t stand it.”
“You are a married man, sir,” said Dinty, the married woman in the role of Stern Duty.
“You needn’t remind me.”
“I will remind you. I’ll remind you and remind you and remind you,” declared Dinty whose thoughts were becoming markedly circulatory.
“Let me remind you that you have a message for me.”
“How do you know that?”
“From the way you sought me out. I could hardly flatter myself that my charms had alienated your affections from young Æsculapius.”
“I should think not, indeed!” returned the wife, indignant and unflattering. “I have a message,” she admitted.
He leaned forward, his eyes alight. “What is it?”
“Oorp!” said Dinty.
“I beg your pardon.”
“I didn’t mean that,” said Dinty and giggled. “What makes me feel so funny?”
“It must be the scent of the flowers,” answered her partner, who knew better, having, for his own purposes, liberally spiked her glass from his brandy-flask.
“I presume that it is. Oorp!” She tried to clarify the message in her mind. “She wishes you to stop writing to her.”
“I haven’t written to her,” returned Silverhorn in obviously genuine surprise.
“Why haven’t you? That isn’t what I meant to say,” said poor Dinty. “What I mean is oorp.”
“Take three slow swallows,” prescribed Silverhorn. “That will stop the hiccups.”
Dinty did so and immediately felt an added sense of responsibility. “You should remember,” she admonished her escort, “that Miss Latham is an affianced bride.”
Silverhorn’s scowl was feral. “You mean she’s promised to marry that Southern whippersnapper?”
“He isn’t a whippersnapper. He’s a very fine young—oorp!—gentleman.”
“I’ll kill him.”
“Maybe he’ll kill you first,” said Dinty brightly.
“By God, I wouldn’t much care!” said he wretchedly, and Dinty found herself being foolishly sorry for him. Her brain was crystal-clear now. She remembered everything and had only the one desire to get it off her mind.
“Wealthy wants to see you. She wants to tell you that all is over between you. But I think it is more seemly and in accord with propriety that you should not meet. You may accept my word,” she continued, enunciating with great particularity, “that she has no desire for further association with you.”
Silverhorn ignored it all. “When and where?” he demanded.
“When and where wha-at?”
“Am I to see her?”
“You can’t see her.”
“Will you give me your word of honor that she doesn’t want to see me?”
“No, I won’t,” she answered uneasily.
“Thank you, Dinty.”
“Oorp!” said Dinty. “Oh, dear! Oorp! Please take me back to my place, Captain Ramsey.”
“I don’t believe you’d better go there,” said Silverhorn, after contemplating her. “You sit still and I’ll fetch your husband to you. Better not drink the rest of that.”
He took the glass from her faltering hand and left. When she roused from a brief, unpremeditated snooze Horace was standing beside her.
“Well!” said he. Dinty decided that she liked his tone as little as his grin. It implied that she had been drinking. When Horace smilingly suggested “Home,” she returned a brisk “Why?” followed by an even brisker “Oorp!”
“That’s why,” answered her husband.
“It’s no reason at all,” asserted she. “I want to dance. I want to go outside,” she amended on second thought.
“That’s why,” repeated Horace, five minutes later, mopping her face with a bar towel.
“D’you mean I’m intoxicated?” asked Dinty viciously.
“Just a little.”
“You’re a very vile fellow,” said she, weeping, “and I shall sleep in the guest chamber.”
Horace grinned again. “You’ll be sorry.”
“I shan’t.”
“You’ll be lonely.”
“I shan’t.”
“You’ll wake up in the middle of the night and want to come back.”
“I shan’t! I’ll never come back.”
It was their first quarrel. That is—as Dinty, waking at early light guiltily qualified—if that can properly be termed a quarrel which is promulgated by one party alone. If only Horace hadn’t grinned so hatefully like a monkey!
Oorp!
– 4 –
Dinty was wrathful and unhappy. Dinty wished to die and be laid away in her mossy tomb for a remorseful widower to weep over. Would Horace weep, though? It was now a whole week since she had withdrawn the grace and comfort of her presence from his bed, and he had offered no comment upon it. She did not expect him to plead on bended knee for her return; Horace’s knee-joints were not hinged that loosely.
But to have him simply and cheerfully ignore her absence was intolerable. Each morning he brought to the breakfast table his amiable smile, his lusty appetite, his polite solicitude regarding her night’s rest. In vain did she develop an alarming cough. It failed to alarm. Upon having it called pointedly and pathetically to his attention, he listened at her chest and prescribed slippery elm and molasses, recommended as an alleviant. Dinty could have hurled the nauseous mixture at his head.
No; she doubted whether early demise would serve her ends. Horace might marry again. Widowers always did. It would be just like him! Whom would he choose, she asked herself in glum surmise. Not Wealthia, who was already bespoken; Dinty couldn’t have stood that. Perhaps that pretty little Vandowzer chit who had shot up so abruptly into womanhood, much as Dinty herself had. Or he might take up with one of those mopsies at the Settlement. That Donie girl had been to the office several times lately. Dinty had heard that when husbands began to neglect their wives (thus she put it to herself) it was a sign of some interpolated passion. There was a touch of the rake about Horace, she reflected, apprehensively remembering Miss Sylvia Sartie. Dinty decided that it was her duty to live and suffer.
In her melancholy disillusionment, she even hinted to Wealthia Latham that wedded life was woman’s martyrdom. Wealthia was not impressed. She was now in one of her calmer and more adjusted phases. She had settled the date of her marriage to Kinsey Hayne for October 15th, and was already planning a celebration the like of which Palmyra had not yet witnessed. Kinsey had left, quietly happy, for his affianced had been, toward the close of the visit, her most affectionate and demonstrative self.
“Wealthia seems quite recovered from her megrims,” said Horace at the supper table on Thursday.
“She has no sorrow
s in her life,” said Dinty darkly.
“That is what puzzled me about her,” said he, helping himself lavishly to rabbit pudding. “I shall be late this evening,” he added.
“Shall you?” The indifference of her response was meant to indicate that it would matter less than nothing to her if he stayed out all night.
“Horse Thief Society,” he explained. “After that, I’ve a couple of professional calls to make.”
“Expectings?”
“One of them. The other’s a fever I don’t like the looks of.”
His wife yawned. “I have an entrancing book. The new Waverley. I shall read myself to sleep.”
She had no such intention. The spell of vagrancy had returned upon her. It was the first stirring of the old impulse since she had fallen in love with Horace. Quaila Crego, laughing, had told her, “Marriage will cool the itch in your feet.” Quaila was wrong. The night called and her blood answered.
The stair-clock struck ten. Dinty jumped from bed and got into her roughest costume, with the short, dark skirt and long, heavy boots. Long out of practice though she was, she let herself down from the window with gymnastic adroitness. To have made exit by the commonplace door would have belied her mood.
It was a wind-fretted night with clouds now revealing, now shrouding a shriveled moon. Dinty’s quivering nostrils smelt rain to come. It exhilarated her. A whippoorwill, unseen in a thicket, rehearsed his insistent monotonies. Farther away, a hoot owl repented a misspent life in liquid and hollow measures. Dinty answered him, and he paused in some uncertainty, then resumed his penitential routine. A fox barked. The silent shadow of a mink, hunting, weaved across her path. Dinty was happy.
It had not been her conscious purpose to spy upon her husband. But, as she skirted the back fences, she heard the loud good nights of the Horsethievers as they poured out from meeting. Why not check up on him? At the end perhaps give him a surprise? To pick him out was easy; she could distinguish the loose, even swing of his gait in a thousand. He was with Decker Jessup, O. Daggett, Silas Bewar and Elder Strang, but soon parted company to cross the street. To pick up Fleetfoot, doubtless. No; Fleetfoot, she recalled, was suffering a slight attack of the epizootic; so Horace would be going afoot. Good! Following afoot would be simplicity itself for the experienced Dinty.
If he had told her the truth (and why should she suspect otherwise, since he never lied?) he would be calling first on the expectant Happalonia Vallance Upcraft. Drifting beneath the window, she eavesdropped the conversation. Happalonia’s pains had not yet set in. False alarm. Horace left, saying that she might expect him in the morning, and the tracker picked up the trail which now led to Poverty’s Pinch. There the doctor spent twenty minutes in one of the huts at the water’s edge. The sleuth heard a voice which she identified as Quaila Crego’s, asking some question; then Horace’s decisive instructions.
“Keep her as cool as you can, and wash your hands well in vinegar whenever you leave. It isn’t spotted fever, but it might be scarlatina anginosa or even maligna.”
Now, Dinty thought, he would turn homeward. He did not, but took the lower path toward the Settlement. Why should he be going there at such a time of night? It could not be an emergency call; nobody had sent any messages that day. Still they might have caught him at the meeting. Just the same, Dinty didn’t like it. She followed along, keeping to cover, and, near the long shack which housed the demimonde, lurked in a thicket. There she got into trouble.
The dog was a mean, little, yappy cur. Not content with raising an embarrassing row, he snapped at her feet, giving her cause for thankfulness that she had on stout boots. There was no club available; the brute’s fervor, instead of abating, increased. She must do something about it. Tip Crego’s instructions of other years came to her aid. Stepping out into the clear back of the copse, she stood perfectly rigid, waiting her opportunity. The cur rushed her legs with swift, snapping advances and retreats, leaving the score of his teeth on the leather more than once, until overconfidence was his undoing. He stood, growling threats of further attack, when the expert kick landed fair and square in the vulnerable spot. Dinty grinned as her assailant faded away in a series of grievous yelps, to trouble her no more.
Creeping back to her point of vantage, she descried a familiar shadow against the paper curtain. It bent above a bed. A female voice shrilled “Darling!” and followed the endearment with a satisfied chuckle. Dinty’s blood went first ice-cold, then boiling hot. She became a mixture of injured spirit and avenging virago. Running to the creek bank, she seized a small boulder, with which she crept close beneath the window. If she now heard or saw what she expected …!
Gwenny Jump’s cheery voice said, “She’ll be like that one time, Doc, and then it’ll take three of us to hold her.”
“See that she gets no more liquor,” directed Horace. “This is opium. If the horrors come on again, give her two pills.”
“Darling!” shrieked the creature on the bed. “Brush ’em off me! Brush ’em off!”
Dinty sneaked away, blushing hotly in the darkness. How could she ever have suspected her Horace! He might be dumb about understanding her; he might treat her like a silly child; he might make fun of her; but, at least, he’d never be guilty of such treachery as she had basely suspected. She fled up the hill and stopped to breathe in the churchyard. Remembering his assignation there with the fair and frail Sylvia, Dinty grew hot again with reminiscent resentment. She’d give him a scare.
She hid behind a tombstone and waited. When Horace approached, she arose with her skirts over her head for whiteness, and gibbered realistically. Horace paused without evidence of trepidation.
“Come out of there,” said he.
Dinty, following her Shakespeare, added a squeak to her gibber.
“Or I’ll haul you out by the scruff of the neck.”
“Peep-bo!” said Dinty, disappointed. “Weren’t you scared a bit?”
He was not even specially surprised, or, if he was, he concealed it.
“So, it’s you,” he remarked. “Night-walking again.”
“It’s such a lovely night,” she returned, disregarding the raindrops that trickled coldly down her neck. (Now he would scold her and she would be prettily penitent and he would take her in his arms and all would be well between them forever after.)
“You know the way home, I suppose,” he suggested mildly.
“Aren’t you coming?” She could not keep the hurt surprise out of her voice.
“Not yet.”
“Horace! It’s after midnight. Where are you going?”
“Back of Winter Green Knob. Colicky baby.”
“Ipecac, cohush and jalap,” recited she glibly. “Poor baby! Take me with you, Doc.”
“Come along, then. You can sit in the smokehouse.”
Bella Griggs’s wailing sixth was soon attended to. Dinty hooked her arm through her husband’s as he emerged.
“I know a short cut,” she said, and guided him across the rump of the knob and around a swampy thicket to the Lathams’ sheeprun. Thence the way led along the back garden for a space.
“Someone up late,” remarked Horace, peering at an upper light in the mansion window. “Why, the old goat!” he exclaimed involuntarily.
“Who?” asked Dinty, pausing to peek through the interstices of the privet.
“Genter Latham. Who else would be coming from his house at this hour of night?”
Dinty was not sure whether the figure, dimly seen through the rain, had come from the house or the stables. It was now locked in embrace with another and slighter form which had moved from the summerhouse to meet it. Hence Horace’s ejaculation.
“Sarah Dorch,” he whispered disgustedly. “So that’s begun again. Come along.”
They plodded home, Dinty, however, was not satisfied in her mind.
“Take off those things at once,” commanded her lord and master. “I’ll get out one of your flannel nightshifts and fix your bed for you.”
St
irring up the kitchen fire, he filled two pickle-bottles from the kettle, inserted them into woolen stockings, and tucked them in at the foot of the bed—the spare chamber bed! Dinty could have wept with chagrin.
“There!” he said with cheery and detestable kindliness. “Can’t have you coming down with peripneumonia.”
Dinty morosely told herself that she wouldn’t give a darn. Ten minutes later, evidence of her husband’s untroubled slumber was rhythmic in the air. Sleep was not for the exasperated soul of the young wife. She lay, open-eyed, pondering what they had seen in the garden, for her woods-trained observation had noted more than her companion’s less keen eyes had perceived. While she could not be positive of her theory, she was worried.
The moon came out. Dinty, warmed now, rose, dressed in dry clothing, and again slipped out into the night. She intended to make certain, one way or the other.
She made her cautious approach to the Latham premises from the rear. No light shone in the mansion. The summer house was empty. The lovers’ tryst was over. Creeping in the shelter of the hedge, she made her way to the spot. In the rain-softened gravel, the trail stood, plain as print. The man’s course had led, not from the house, but around its corner, indicating that he had presumably hidden in the stables while he waited. It was the smaller footprints that had come from the house and returned thither, while the midnight cavalier had taken a side-path back in the direction of town—and the canal.
Dinty did not need to visit the basin in order to be certain that the Jolly Roger was still moored there.
Fever broke out in Brockport and Horace Amlie was sent for. Dinty thrilled with pride over this evidence of his extending reputation. As he planned to spend a night with Dr. Vought in Rochester, he figured on an absence of at least four days. It was the first separation for the Amlies. Dinty went down to the packet landing to bid her husband farewell with wifely admonitions. Evening had set in when she got back to the house, after having supper at the Lathams’. A tubby figure rose from the front steps and saluted, military style. It was Dad Hinch, the Human Teapot.
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