“Has Wealthia heard from Hayne?”
She nodded. “By yesterday’s post.”
“When is he coming up?”
“What makes you so sure he’s coming?” she teased.
“He gave me his assurance.”
“Kin is a man of his word. But I doubt it will be soon.”
“It should be soon,” said Horace with emphasis.
Dinty’s strong and delicately arched eyebrows went up. “Still bossing the world,” she murmured.
He attempted to cloak his error. “When a young female becomes low-minded and vaporish and fails to correct her spirits,” he explained, “it is sound medical practice to employ non-medical agencies for her recovery. I consider Kinsey Hayne to be in that category.”
“What if your patient doesn’t like the prescription?”
Horace hunched half way out of his chair. “Doesn’t like the man to whom she’s bespoken? What’s all this?”
“That isn’t what I said. Certainly she likes him. But that doesn’t mean that she wants to see him right now.”
“Why not?”
His wife regarded him with pitying condescension. “You don’t know much about females, do you, Doc?”
“I’m sitting at the feet of wisdom,” he returned with grim patience.
“A very proper place for you, sir. Now you shall have your lesson. Have you noticed a change in Wealthy?”
“Am I stone-blind?”
“All beauties have their ups and downs,” pursued the little oracle. “Wealthia isn’t at her best, and knows it.”
Horace was relieved. So that was all that Dinty had observed.
“Do you think Kinsey would mind that?” he asked.
“He wouldn’t show it. But he’d mind. Men always do. If I wasn’t pretty any more,” she added with an impudent tilt of the face, “you’d put me out in the woodshed to sleep. You tried once.”
“Vanitas vanitatum,” said he. “I thought we were discussing Wealthia.”
“It’s vanity with Wealthy, too. She doesn’t want Kin to see her looking like this. Isn’t that natural? You just fix her up like herself; then she’ll send for him quickly enough.” Her expression took on gravity. “Doc, how worried are you about Wealthy?”
“Not at all.”
“You are, so. I can tell it. It isn’t lung-fever? Or—or anything bad?”
“Nothing of the sort. There’s no cause for worry, I keep telling you.”
“You don’t know what it is. That’s what makes you so cross. I can tell you one thing: she’s timid about marriage.”
“Nonsense. Why should she be?” he amended.
“Why should anyone? Girls are, though. I was, myself.”
“It didn’t keep you from getting married,” he pointed out. “It doesn’t keep most girls if they get the chance.”
“It won’t keep Wealthy,” said her friend. “Wait and see. I’m sorry for poor Kin, though. D’you think it would do any good if I wrote and explained to him?”
“Explained what? No, don’t interfere with what you don’t understand,” he said hastily.
“Neither do you,” she retorted. “You look mad as a bear with a sore tail,” she added irreverently. “You always do when things puzzle you. It’s a grave flaw in your character.” This last was so accurate an imitation of the Reverend Theron Strang in his more personal approach to sinners, that Horace grinned as he politely invited his wife to leave, on the ground of office hours impending.
Some days later, Dinty met him at the gate, a waxed and sealed letter in her hand, a dancing light of curiosity in her face.
“From Kinsey Hayne,” said she.
He took it to his office, leaving her in a pout. Here was he, gone all day and forgot to kiss her when he returned! He must be expecting something important from Kin Hayne. Well, soon or later she would find out what.
Hardly waiting to seat himself, Horace slit open the overflap. The date was July 17, six days before. There were only a half-dozen lines in Kinsey’s small, strong, regular handwriting.
Sir,
This is to inform and assure you that the suspicions which you expressed to me are wholly baseless. This I state on the authority of the person most involved. I swear this on the honor of a gentleman and a Carolinian, and I bind you on your own honor to the silence of your profession.
Yours respectfully,
Kinsey Hayne.
What could it mean? Had he overestimated Hayne’s quality? Was he no more than a conscienceless backslider? Had he got Wealthia with child and, too cowardly or too dishonorable to meet the issue, chosen this method of evasion? Or had Wealthia, in writing to her affianced, persisted in her desperate and hopeless course of denial? Or could his own diagnosis possibly be in error? He put the chilling thought from him hastily.
What had Wealthia written to Kinsey? All depended upon that. That, at least, Horace could and would find out.
It did not then occur to him that Kinsey might be perjuring himself, like the gentleman he was.
– 7 –
Horace was bending over what Dinty called, with invincible distaste, his leechery when she came dancing in. At first she did not notice his occupation.
“When I am queen,” she warbled, taking unwarranted liberties with the text, “you shall be king.”
Her husband straightened up with a corpulent bloodsucker carefully suspended between thumb and forefinger. To the end of stimulating its appetite for its next feast, he proceeded to strip it of blood, the crimson stream trickling into his spittoon.
“Awgk!” retched Dinty, turning white.
Horace cocked a swift and eager eye at her. “Hey?” said he. “What’s this?”
“Nothing,” said she, reddening. “Those awful creatures. They always make me sick.”
“Hmph! Any other symptoms?”
“No!”
“No need to be violent about it. I’ve thought once or twice that I noticed indications.” He eyed her with speculation. “Though I must say I don’t see any signs.”
“No fault of yours,” she retorted impudently.
“Well, you ought to know,” he admitted, lifting out another squirming blob.
“Do you want me to be sick on your floor?” she demanded.
“I shouldn’t mind. In a good cause.” He abandoned his task.
“Husbands are always ‘expecting,’ ” said she with disdain. “Aren’t I trouble enough in the house?”
“Heaven is my witness,” he answered, raising pious eyes.
She sat down. “Of course I want babies, Doc. Lots of ’em. But not yet. Will you think I’m silly if I tell you why?”
“Probably. But that needn’t stop you.”
“I never want a baby of ours to come to a house we don’t own.”
“We own this one,” said he, astonished.
“Not while there’s a dollar left unpaid on it. Pa’s always been in debt and pretending not to worry about it. I hate it. Is it awfully dumb of me, darling, to feel that way?”
“I don’t know that it is. It won’t take long to clear the note at our present rate.”
“Then we’ll save for our cobblestone house with the carved oaken door and the leaded sidelights with eagles. Won’t it be dicty!” she purred. “And I’ll start right in having a baby every year. Ten of ’em. Maybe twelve. Doc, the day the note is paid, I’m going to feel so lucky that I’ll march right down to the Literature Lottery and buy a whole chance, and I’ll warrant it’ll win one of the Grand Prizes. And there’s our cobblestone house! No trouble at all.”
“Lord help me! I’ve got a gamester for a wife,” lamented Horace, who occasionally, in secret and with consistent unsuccess, took a modest flier, though nothing like the full-chance twenty-five-dollar ticket which Dinty proposed.
“You ought not to object,” she pointed out. “The lottery supports your old college that you’re so dozened on.” Which was something of an exaggeration, though not without a basis of truth. “We’ll have
a boy first, so you can send him there,” she concluded indulgently.
He changed the subject. Observant as Dinty was, he felt sure that she must soon become suspicious of her chum. He asked,
“How does Wealthia seem to you lately?”
“Quieter than usual. It’s something about Kinsey, I believe. She hasn’t told me yet.”
“I thought I’d drop around there this evening.”
He found Genter Latham smoking with an expression of unusual amiability. “Your treatment is proving successful, my boy,” said the great man.
“You think that Wealthia is improving?”
“Don’t you?”
The physician chose his words discreetly. “I see no deterioration.”
“She talks of going away for a time.”
“Where?” Horace’s uneasiness must have shown in his expression, for his host waved aside the cloud of tobacco smoke, the better to observe him.
“To Albany. A visit to friends. Any reason why not?”
“Would you accompany her?”
“Do you think it advisable?”
As Horace made no reply, the great man pressed the question.
“Do you consider that necessary, Amlie?”
“I think it desirable.”
“Why?”
“Wealthia should not leave town without someone to—to watch over her.”
“Is it as serious as that?” Latham’s face was seamed with anxiety. Pity almost but not quite undermined Horace’s resolution. Wealthia must not, on any account, be allowed to take her case of “cancer” to some practitioner who might be free from Horace’s professional and moral scruples.
“Mr. Latham,” he said, “I have something grave to tell you.”
The father shaded his eyes with his left hand. The hand shook.
“Is my girl going to die?”
“No.”
A bursting sigh came from the compressed lips. There was exasperation as well as relief in the next question.
“Can’t you speak out?”
“Your daughter is pregnant.”
“Pregnant,” echoed Genter Latham so mechanically that Horace doubted whether he had taken in the full significance.
“She is going to have a baby.”
The effect was startlingly different from Horace’s expectations. Genter Latham laughed with unforced contempt. “You fool!”
Horace tautened. “You think me a fool? Ask her.”
“I’ll not insult her with any such blackguardly folderol.”
“The visit to Albany is a pretext. She hopes to be rid of the child.”
“A fool and a liar.”
“Why should I lie to you, Mr. Latham?”
“To veil your own ignorance. You haven’t the science to understand her case, so you fall back upon this foul pretext.”
“If you won’t believe me, take her to some other reputable physician.”
“And soil her good name by telling him of your filthy suspicions?”
“Have you had no cause for suspicion?”
“No, by God!” shouted the father.
“And I’m the fool,” said Horace quietly.
“Before I turn you out,” said the autocrat, leaning forward to probe the other’s face with his glance, “give me one reason for your foul charge against a virtuous girl.”
“She as much as admitted it to me.”
Horace observed with a sort of awe the phenomenon of a man’s eyes turning red under stress of fury, as the veins of the iris suffused with blood. For the moment he feared apoplexy. Hastily filling a glass with water from the pitcher on the desk, he held it out.
“This is a shock, I know,” said he placatingly. “Take a slow swal——”
The tall tumbler, struck from his grasp, crashed against the wall.
“Get out before I treat you the same,” gasped Genter Latham.
“I’ll go out as I came in,” returned Horace, thin-lipped. “And I leave you one word of warning. Six months from now …”
A swift change in the glaring face before him checked the speech. He turned his head. Wealthia Latham stood in the doorway, her lips parted, the velvety fire of her eyes unearthly bright in the pallor of her face. She was in a loose robe, thrown over her nightdress.
“I heard something,” said she, thrusting at a fragment of glass with her fur-shod foot. “What have you been telling my father?”
“Go back to your bed, my dawtie,” said Latham tenderly. “A political dispute. Not for your little ears.”
“What have you told him?” she challenged Horace.
“The truth.”
She shook her lovely head. “Not truth. Imagination.”
“Do you know what he has been saying to me?” demanded Genter Latham.
“I can guess.” She seemed incredibly composed.
“Then tell me—tell him that he’s a cowardly and malicious liar,” he begged with pathetic confidence.
Again she made a sign of negation. “Not a liar. Too obstinate to admit that he doesn’t know what is wrong with me.”
“For God’s sake, what is wrong?”
The girl, her eyes cast down, spoke with a commiseration and composure which astonished Horace who only now had begun to perceive that he had to do with a consummate actress playing a shrewdly devised role.
“I didn’t want you to know, Pa, till it was over.”
“Till what was over? Christ! Will someone give me facts?”
Wealthia turned upon Horace. “I asked him, I begged him to cut for the cancer.”
“Cancer?” breathed her father. “The cancer? You, my dawtie?”
“That cancer,” put in Horace bitterly, “is alive. It will come away of itself in December.”
“You see,” she sighed. “I have sworn to him that I am innocent, What more can I do?”
“Will you have the opinion of another physician?” asked Horace.
Too late he perceived his mistake. The only other physician readily available was Gail Murchison. That time-serving old quack would take any risk, lend himself to any deception to oust his supplanter from the favor of Palmyra’s richest family.
“No,” said Wealthia, and he breathed easier.
“Yes,” said her father, and Horace essayed to mend his fences.
“Let me call in Dr. Vought from Rochester. Nobody can deny his qualifications.”
Wealthia appealed to her father with a maidenly shudder. “A stranger! I couldn’t, Pa. It would be so horrid!”
“But, dawtie,” he cried in anguish. “If it should be what you think.”
She turned stricken eyes upon him. “Do you doubt me, Father?”
“No, no! Not as to what this blundering impostor claims. But the—the cancer”—he could hardly force himself to utter the word—“surely something can be done.”
“To cut for cancer is death,” pronounced Horace.
Genter Latham flinched. But Wealthia showed the courage of her breed.
“He’s even ignorant on that. There are cures. The medical journ—I have heard of cures. Can you deny that there have been cures?” she challenged Horace.
“Claims,” he replied. “Doubtful.”
“If I am to be submitted to another examination,” said the girl with meek patience, “let it be kind, old Dr. Murchison.”
So there it was! Old Murch would provide the diagnosis that was expected of him. Too experienced to mistake a condition so obvious, he would, if Horace correctly read his unprincipled character, agree to perform an operation for the alleged cancer and remove it, though not by the desperate expedient of incision. Thus Wealthia would be relieved of the burden of her misstep. He could not but admire her courage and resource. How cleverly she had turned his revelation, which she must have long foreseen as inevitable, to her own purposes!
Not that Horace had any intention of standing inertly by and permitting an illegal operation to be performed. Unless he was the more mistaken, he could block that little game!
�
�I should like to be present when Dr. Murchison sees the patient,” said he stiffly.
“I will go fetch him, myself,” said Genter Latham, cutting short what his daughter had started to say.
She waited until his footsteps on the flagged path beneath the window had passed, then turned upon Horace. At that moment she looked like her father in his blackest mood.
“You saw Kinsey Hayne in New York.”
“Yes.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Everything.”
“You—you false devil! Haven’t you any honor or decency? You violated your oath.”
Horace could not deny that this was technically true. “I acted as your friend and your father’s,” he defended himself.
“Friend!” she retorted bitterly. “A fine friend! You only made a fool of yourself. You couldn’t make Kinsey believe you.”
“He tried loyally not to.”
Her face softened. “He is loyal, loyal and fine. He wouldn’t betray a confidence.”
“When is he coming?”
“Not at all.”
“Not after what I told him?”
“I wrote him it was all a mistake,” she said calmly. “I told him not to come.”
“Wealthia,” he said persuasively, “tell him the truth. He is an honorable gentleman. He will make amends. Have him come up here quickly. Or, better still, do you go down there and marry him quietly.”
She gazed at him fixedly. “What if I don’t choose to marry him?”
“The choice is no longer yours. What else can you do?”
“Remain a maiden.”
“A what?”
The thrust was cruel. She took it without flinching.
“You have told my affianced and my father. Neither of them believes you. Who else are you going to tell?”
“No one.”
“On your honor?”
“Yes.”
“If you have any,” she qualified. “Does Dinty know?”
“Not yet.”
“What does that mean—not yet?”
He made a gesture of impatience. “Wealthia, I can’t for my life understand you. Everybody must know before long. Can’t you face facts?”
She said clearly, “What difference if I do die under the knife? The cancer is eating away my life day by day.”
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