Canal Town

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

  “Why?”

  “Oh—to think.”

  “It’s nothing for you to meddle in, Dinty.”

  “But …”

  “Mind you say nothing of this. Not a word to Wealthia, to anybody. You understand?”

  Not by habit of mind a meek wife, Dinty understood her Horace well enough to know when she must go cannily. Covering her resentment with what dignity she could muster, she returned,

  “When have I ever interfered with your professional affairs, Horace?”

  He softened. “Never mind, Puss. You’ll understand some day.”

  “Speed the day,” said Dinty.

  Since their marriage she had seen little of her mother. Horace and she had dined a few times at the big house, always over his protests. Squire Jerrold frequently dropped in to see her on his way to the Eagle for his social dram which was now a daily ceremonial. But Dorcas Jerrold’s animosity had mollified little. Dinty had made her choice between her family and “that upstart”; let her abide by it.

  So the young wife’s eyes widened, not altogether with pleasure, at sight of her mother entering the garden gate alone. There was a malicious smile on Mrs. Jerrold’s delicate mouth.

  “That husband of yours has fashed his prospects well, this time,” she began.

  “How?” said Dinty, instantly defensive.

  “By his quarrel with Genter Latham.”

  “If they have quarreled, it is Mr. Latham’s doing.”

  “So he tells you, doubtless.”

  “He doesn’t need to tell me. I know it.”

  “Mr. Latham has sworn to chase him from town.”

  Dinty’s small and resolute chin went up. “Let him try!”

  “Do you know what the trouble was about?” asked the mother curiously.

  “No.”

  “I believe you do, but you won’t say. Just like your high-minded uppishness.”

  “I don’t. But if I did, I wouldn’t tell.”

  “My poor child! Wedded to a pigheaded and reckless young nincompoop. When he has lost his practice and been driven from Palmyra in disgrace, you will be glad to find a home with us.”

  Dinty’s small chin set solidly. “Where my husband goes, I go. Don’t fret yourself, Ma. It will take more than Genter Latham to drive us from home.”

  “Wait and see,” was Dorcas Jerrold’s parting shot.

  Apprehension sharpened the young wife’s powers of observation. She noticed, or thought that she noticed a change of bearing on the part of some of the leading citizens toward her husband. Cordiality was waning. There was an attitude of caution. Genter Latham’s enmity, though not yet overt, was beginning to tell. All the town knew, of course, that there had been a split between Dr. Amlie and the Latham family; that Dr. Murchison had supplanted the younger man. This, of itself, was a detriment to the Amlie prestige.

  Horace’s efforts on behalf of the communal health were impaired. Hostility toward his clean-up measures, never wholly eliminated, stiffened now that the great man was presumptively no longer backing them. Ephraim Upcraft, always a barometer of public feeling, drove a scavenging crew from his premises. Augustus Levering, whose compost heap had waxed in fragrance with every humid spell, threatened legal processes. There was talk of a memorial to the village trustees, protesting against the invasion of property rights by the special constable. Horace’s uncompromising reply to criticism was that Palmyra could take its choice between filth and health. Anyone who wanted to stink and die, let him go elsewhere and do it. The suggestion, while liberal, did not make its proponent more popular.

  Try as he might, Horace could not conceal his increasing concern from his wife. He announced one morning that he was taking the boat to Rochester to consult with Dr. Vought on public matters. Dinty suspected that one very private trouble might be thrashed out between them. She knew her husband’s respect for his old mentor’s judgment.

  “It’ll do you good,” she approved. “You’re working much too hard.”

  While he was gone, the post brought a letter in Kinsey Hayne’s handwriting. Dinty could hardly believe her eyes when she saw, large, blue and oval in the upper center, the impress of the post office of mailing. It was Port Royal, S. C. Kinsey had gone back home, then, and without seeing Wealthia. Less than three months from the date set for the wedding. The thing was inexplicable.

  Horace returned from his two-day stay looking refreshed and with the gleam of battle renewed in his eyes. Dinty handed him the post.

  “Kinsey has gone back south,” said she.

  Horace stared at her as if not fully comprehending. “Surely not!”

  “Look at the post-office print-mark.”

  He examined it, forced the overfold with care so as to avoid damage to the writing on the reverse, glanced at the inside, and went into his office, closing the door behind him. Two minutes passed. Dinty did not consciously listen, but she heard a sound interprétable in only one way, the spitt of steel against flint. Horace might be lighting his pipe to facilitate thought. Or …

  The door opened. Horace appeared. His face was heavy with thought; distress, too, it seemed to Dinty. He was not smoking. He said,

  “Dinty, is Wealthia still betrothed to Kinsey Hayne?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hasn’t she said anything to you about him?”

  “Yes. She said she had written to him.”

  “When?” he asked quickly.

  “The last time I went there.”

  “Anything else?”

  “She said that she didn’t want to see him until she was feeling better and she thought he wouldn’t come up.”

  “Apparently she was right.”

  “You’re worried about it, aren’t you, Doc?” she ventured.

  “If I am, it mustn’t go any further.”

  Plainly that was all that she was going to get out of him on the subject. After he had left on his rounds, she entered the office and scanned the fireplace. On the otherwise clean hearth there was a black, curled ash, and a thick, unconsumed fragment of the outer sheet which had carried the address. Dinty thought lugubriously that her husband might have trusted her with the substance of the letter, at least. Why must he be so secretive? She felt put aside, set apart from his interests and concerns.

  Sorrow for Wealthia, disappointment in Kinsey Hayne, and a sense of uncertainty and frustration over the whole affair, seethed in Horace’s mind, as he went about his calls. The Southerner had written:

  Owing to information recently received, I have now to tender you my humble and heartfelt apologies for my erroneous aspersions upon your veracity and character. I beg, sir, that you will not think too harshly of an unhappy man, and I invoke your charity toward an unhappy woman.

  We shall not meet again. I trust implicitly to your honor to destroy this letter at once and to hold its content inviolably secret. Believe me, sir, the brief friendship which I was privileged to enjoy with your lovely wife and yourself has been a bright spot in an existence which can end only in darkness. I am, sir, with profound respect,

  Your humble servant,

  KINSEY HAYNE.

  Post Scriptum—May I say, without offense, that an answer to this would be unavailing?

  For some reason not clear to himself, the final sentence had struck a chill to the reader’s heart.

  – 9 –

  The first sign of waning popularity noted by Dinty was a diminution of cash receipts in ratio to barter. Several prominent names were crossed off her books. The Dillards and Fairlies now canalled to Rochester or coached to Canandaigua for their ordinary doctoring. George W. Woodcock belched his dyspeptic complaints in the sympathetic ear of Old Murch. Mrs. Van Wie bore her fourth baby with the aid of a midwife. L. St. John had his neck-boils lanced by L. Brooks, M.D., the barber.

  In all this the hand of Genter Latham was patent. It did not extend to the brotherhood of the smithy, which stuck staunchly to Dr. Amlie. His canal and backwoods practice increased steadily. This was somewhat les
s remunerative than the best of the village patronage. Though total receipts were less, the little financier was still able to set aside a substantial sum toward the satisfaction of the note at the bank. When the fight should come into the open, she did not want her Horace beholden to the great man in any degree.

  Mr. Latham no longer spoke to her when they met on the street, but restricted his acknowledgment of her existence to a dour jerk of the head. After two or three repetitions, Dinty went him one better by haughtily gazing over his head. With Wealthia, however, her relations remained affectionate. The two chums visited back and forth freely, though both chose hours when the men-folk would be absent. By mutual and tacit consent, the matter of the quarrel was avoided.

  It was still a mystery to Dinty. Her mother’s theory failed to satisfy her.

  Further elucidation, if such it could be called, came from Mrs. Jerrold who stopped in, market basket on arm, for another chat. Two visits within a fortnight! Was it an overture for family peace? At the expression of petty triumph on her visitor’s face, Dinty dismissed that idea and set herself on guard. Something unpleasant was coming.

  The conversation opened with conventional housewifely complaints as to the dearness of market staples. Eggs had gone to a penny apiece. One could not be sure of good salted butter at less than fifteen cents a pound. A rise in butcher’s meat was threatened; presently they would all be reduced to living on venison and wildfowl like penniless woodcutters.

  “You’ll feel the pinch, my poor child, in your straitened circumstances,” prophesied the mother.

  Dinty’s eyebrows elevated themselves delicately, a manifestation which could be relied upon to annoy Mrs. Jerrold. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Ma.”

  “You’re not going to tell me that your husband isn’t losing all his patients!”

  Dinty chose to present her own interpretation. “People do die, naturally,” she said. “We’ve lost a few. But new patients come in to fill their places.”

  Mrs. Jerrold sniffed. “If Dr. Amlie lost them only by death! Having them quit him is so much worse. Though I’m sure I don’t know what else he could expect.”

  “Pa’s asthma is improving, isn’t it?” said the daughter brightly if inconsecutively. “Horace has always been so successful with respiratory complaints.”

  Mrs. Jerrold’s eyes snapped. “I suppose he was treating Wealthia Latham for asthma.”

  “Perhaps I forgot to tell you, Ma, that the Doctor doesn’t discuss his patients with me.”

  “Then you don’t know what’s being freighted about?”

  “I don’t want to,” valiantly lied Dinty.

  “It’s high time you did, for your own sake. People are saying that your precious husband told Mr. Latham that Wealthy is in the family way.”

  Dinty flushed furiously. “It’s a lie. How could she be? I mean, Horace would never make such a vile accusation.”

  “Ask him.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You’re afraid to. Or you’re so dozened on him still that you wouldn’t, anyway.”

  “I never heard anything so wicked and silly in my life,” said Dinty, recovering her poise. “Wealthy have a baby! Why, she isn’t even married yet.”

  “Did I say she was going to have one? Nobody says that but your husband. Dr. Murchison, when he was called in, exposed the pretensions of ignorance finely.”

  “I suppose the old blab-mouth breached it to you,” said the wife contemptuously.

  “Never mind where I learned it,” retorted Mrs. Jerrold, who did not care to admit that she had been listening to servant-maid’s gossip. “Now you know what sort of a man you’ve married.”

  “I don’t believe a single word of it,” declared Dinty stoutly. “And you can just tell whoever told you that if she doesn’t stop her mouth, we’ll have the law of her.”

  “There’ll be lawing before all’s said and done maybe,” returned the matron darkly. “But it won’t be you that calls for it.”

  In spite of her doughty disclaimer, Dinty’s heart quavered. Could Horace have committed himself to so disastrous an error? Something deadly serious had arisen between him and Mr. Latham. The quality of the autocrat’s fury attested to that. With sickening realization, she admitted to herself that her mother’s version would go far toward explaining the crisis; the sudden violence of the feud; Genter Latham’s silent vengefulness; Horace’s secrecy. If the thought flashed to her mind that Wealthy might, indeed, be “in the family way,” she dismissed it instantly as being against the evidence. For, whatever had ailed the girl, she was quite plainly getting better, not worse. If the old insolent charm and careless gayety had not wholly returned, at least she was improved and steadily improving both in spirit and body. How could that be if she were carrying an illegitimate child? It was absurd. And Horace must know it. The whole thing was foul gossip and idle malice.

  Nevertheless, she meditated long as to going to her husband about it. What good would it do? If she tried to lead up to the subject, she would only lay herself open to being told, tartly or indulgently according to his mood of the moment, to mind her own business. Tartly, in all probability. Horace’s temper had been growing more and more uncertain lately.

  On his part, Horace had marked with incredulous astonishment, that betterment on the part of his ex-patient which had so impressed his wife. The improved ease of body he could account for readily enough. This would be, by his reckoning the fifth month. Normally the physique should by now have adjusted itself to the new demands. But only by enlargement. The puzzling, the inexplicable feature was that while Wealthia’s gravidity had been evident enough to his expert eye a month or so earlier, it now seemed to be lessening or, at worst, stationary.

  Naturally he lacked opportunity of satisfactory observation, since the girl shunned him. Such casual encounters as those of the public streets, however, convinced him that there was something abnormal about the case; it was not apparently taking the course which he had so confidently forecast. Over-confidence? He refused to admit that possibility. It added nothing to his comfort to mark Dr. Murchison’s smug smile when they met. On one such occasion, the hirsute physician brought the matter to speech.

  “Do you still maintain your diagnosis in a certain case of mutual interest, Doctor?” he inquired slyly.

  “I do.”

  “The symptoms hardly bear you out.”

  “Depends on who interprets ’em,” growled Horace.

  “You will admit that I am in better position to judge of my patient’s state than you are.”

  “I don’t count your judgment for that.” He rudely illustrated with a finger-and-thumb snap.

  The old fellow was unperturbed. “The growth is abating under my medication.”

  Horace snorted and passed on. Abating, was it? A very gradual, almost imperceptible abatement. Too gradual for a miscarriage. Besides, Wealthia had not been bedridden for so much as a day. The Human Teapot’s watchfulness assured him of that.

  For further evidence, he fell in back of the girl when next he saw her on Main Street, and followed unobtrusively noting her figure and gait. There could be no doubt on one point; the slender grace of her form had thickened; not to the point of incipient unwieldiness, but still unmistakably to an eye familiar with her earlier outlines. His uneasy cogitations were interrupted by a small hand, slipped through his arm.

  “What are you glooming about, Doc?”

  “Oh! Hello, Dinty. Coming home?”

  “No. I’m meeting Wealthy at Miss Blombright’s.”

  “The dressmaker’s?”

  “Don’t look so dumbstruck. Why not?”

  “Is Wealthia interested in new clothes?”

  “Isn’t every girl?”

  “She must be feeling better.”

  “Oh, she is! Heaps,” replied his wife with enthusiasm.

  Horace became Machiavellian—or so he considered himself. He drew his wife aside. “I’m still interested in Wealthia as a case,” said he. “
Could you get me her waist and bust measurements? Then I’d like to know what they were—well, say last winter. Miss Blombright keeps her patterns, I suppose. Could you find out without Wealthia’s knowing? Pretend that you’re going to knit a sickroom jacket for her.”

  Dinty eyed him sorrowfully. “Oh, Doc!” she murmured. “Are you still nursing that crazy idea?”

  His chin jerked up. “What crazy idea?”

  “Nothing,” said she hastily.

  “What have you been hearing?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” It was a sadly feeble disclaimer.

  “This is no place to talk. Come home.”

  Dinty pulled away from him. “I can’t. I’ve got an agreement for three o’clock with Wealthy.”

  “It can wait. Come with me.”

  Miserable and scared, she trotted along beside him. She was in for it now! He held the office door open for her, and closed it behind them.

  “Now, Araminta,” said he.

  “Are you going to be mean to me?” she asked doubtfully.

  “I’m going to have the truth out of you.”

  “Because if you’re horrid, I’ll run away.”

  “What is this crazy idea you accuse me of harboring?”

  She drew a long breath. “That Wealthy was going to have a baby.”

  “So she is.”

  “Doc! I don’t believe it.”

  “Don’t you? Where are your eyes? And you, a doctor’s wife.”

  “It can’t be true. It must be something else.”

  “So she told her father. He believed her lies. That is why I was turned off.”

  “But—but—but, I don’t understand. How could she be …?”

  “In the usual course of nature,” was the grim reply. “It began when Kinsey Hayne was here in April.”

  “Oh, no! Not Kinsey!” she cried.

  “Who else would you suspect?” he asked sardonically.

  “No one,” she hastened to assure him. “But—but if it were so, wouldn’t he know?”

  “He does know. He’s run away from it.”

  “Never!” exclaimed Dinty. “Not Kin. He’d never do that.”

  “I wouldn’t have believed it of him, myself,” Horace admitted.