When I grow up I shall be a Star in the Furmament of the Dramma.
(DIARY OF MISS ARAMINTA JERROLD)
“What are we going to do about Dinty?” asked Archibald Jerrold.
“Araminta,” sighed Mrs. Jerrold, “is an enigma.”
“She’s got the devil in her,” said the father, and chuckled.
“I have taught her all that I am able at home.”
Squire Jerrold, fingering his elegant neckcloth, privately reflected that this would not be very much, but was too gentlemanly to say so. He was three times the age of his third wife when he married her, thirteen years before, and the advent of Dinty, after a varied brood of half-brothers and half-sisters had wedded and scattered, was a surprise to him and a shock to his eighteen-year-old consort, who, pale, willowy and torpid of mind and body, had had her stubbornly maintained sentiments and preferences of virginity rudely dislocated by the event.
“These Larrabees are said to be both genteel and pious,” observed the Squire, consulting a neatly printed singlesheet before him.
It set forth that Prof. & Mrs. Larrabee had opened a Polite Academy for the Young of Both Sexes, who could there find skilled instruction in Spelling, Ciphering, Parsing, Geography, the Single and Double Rule of Three, Gain and Loss, and the Square and Cube Root with exercises from the English Reader and the Columbian Orator. Latin and Greek would be afforded the advanced pupils; French and Musical Instruction involved an extra fee. Piety would be inculcated as well as Elegant Deportment, and there was specific promise that “the manners and morals of pupils will receive careful attention and discipline.” Also there was Special Medical Attention.
“Discipline,” commented Mr. Jerrold, arching his delicate brows. “Our domestic efforts have not been crowned with invariable success.”
A troubled silence followed. Both minds were uncomfortably reviewing an episode of the previous week. Dinty had observed at table, apropos of nothing in particular, that she did not see why there had to be a Hell. Worse, she undertook to argue the point with her mother. Upon Mrs. Jerrold’s tearful insistence, the father had ear-led his child to the woodshed and undertaken to correct her heresy with the family strap. Under this force majeure Dinty recanted, but in bitterness of spirit. Imprisoned in her room on the bread and water of repentance, she brooded all day and departed through the window and down the trellised wall at fall of dark. After a night of anguished and futile search, the Jerrolds were choking over their breakfast when a diminutive and travel-worn figure appeared in the doorway.
“I should like my porridge,” said Dinty.
There was dust in her hair and her hands were blistered. First caught to the family bosom, and subsequently threatened with further and direr penalties, she enunciated her declaration of independence in terms of the improving literature upon which girlhood was reared.
“I am your loving and obedient daughter and I owe you all duty and respect in which I trust you shall never find me wanting” (thus far, from The Pious Child, by a Minister of the Gospel: Dinty was blessed with a retentive memory), “but if you whip me again I shall run away and this time I’ll stay. And I don’t want to believe in Hell, but if you want me to, I’ll try, and I hope a lot of people I know will go there.”
Mrs. Jerrold shrieked in horror. Squire Jerrold, after a struggle, broke down and laughed with indecent abandon. Thus was Dinty’s sore spirit saved from further humiliation, and her sore person from added stripes.
In due time she was informed of the plan to send her to the Polite Academy where she would learn the deportment of a little lady. She considered this mistrustfully.
“I’m not sure I want to be a little lady,” she decided.
“What a child!” cried the despairing mother.
“What would you prefer to be?” inquired the Squire. In spite of misgivings and incomprehensions, there existed between the two a mutual sympathy unshared by the mother.
“A treasure-seeker,” Dinty announced.
Her father took one of the little paws in his grasp, turned it over and examined the tender palm, where remnants of nocturnal blisters were still discernible.
“Oho!” he said, and Dinty blushed.
“Is Wealthy going to the new school?” she inquired.
“So I understand,” replied her father. “In point of fact it was Mr. Genter Latham’s suggestion that first turned my attention to it.”
“If Wealthy goes, I’ll go.”
She was self-appointed maid-in-waiting to her local Majesty of the Court of Girlhood, Wealthia Latham. Two years older than Dinty, the motherless heiress to the Latham fortune accepted this worshipful fealty as of royal prerogative. In her early teens, she was already an object of warm speculation to the enterprising youth of the village. She was dark and lithely made, with lustrous eyes, bold curvature of mouth, and a proud little head, full of golden opinions of herself and of the world which afforded her everything that she demanded of it. Her austere father adored her and pampered her to an extent that would have spoiled a less naturally amiable disposition.
Wealthia’s patronage of her admiring little henchwoman was tempered by a sensible recognition that Dinty was cleverer and more spirited than herself. She did not mind this. In her sunny self-satisfaction there was little room for envy.
On her part, Dinty was supremely unself-conscious, having far too lively an interest and enjoyment in the exterior world to bother about herself introspectively. This extended even to her personal appearance. When her father teasingly called her “Snubnose” she accepted it unresentingly as one of the prevalent disabilities of her years, like not being permitted a cushion in church and having to perform the lesser household chores. The overheard remark of a visiting half-sister, that those blue eyes were going to make trouble for somebody one of these days, left her incurious. She thought that the reference was to her exploratory habits of looking into whatever specially interested her, which included most matters within her ken.
The two children were deposited at the door of the academy by their respective fathers, who went on to the Eagle for a morning dram. Dinty hailed her friend.
“ ’lo, Wealthy.”
“ ’lo, Dinty.”
“You going to like coming here to school?”
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“Oo—oo! You’d get whipped.”
“Then I’ll run away again. I’ll keep running away and running away and running away till they get tired of chasing me. Wealthy, did you ever dig for buried treasure?”
“No.”
“It’s fun.”
“It must be. I saw a play about it once.”
Dinty’s voice dropped. “Do you mean a real play on a stage with actors and actresses?”
“Yes. In Albany.”
Dinty sighed with envy. “My ma says actresses are wicked Delilahs. She cried when she saw Pa talking to one once.”
“I don’t care. I’d like to be one.”
“I went to a popet show once. It was called Punch and Judy.”
“That isn’t a drama,” said the elder disparagingly. “There’s one here tonight, though.”
“Oh-h-h-h-h! Where?”
“In the Eagle ballroom. A moral tragedy. I don’t like moral tragedies specially,” went on the hardened playgoer. “I like laughable farces. There’s a laughable farce to follow.”
Dinty’s breath quickened. “How I’d admire to go!”
“It’s twenty-five cents.”
“I haven’t got twenty-five cents,” said Dinty, despondent. She brightened. “I’ve got eighteen cents, though, in my missionary fund box.”
Wealthia’s dark eyes rounded. “You’d go straight to hell.”
“I s’pose I would.” Dinty weighed the chances, pro and con, and decided that it was not worth the risk.
“Why don’t you get your pa to take you?” asked her friend.
“Pa might say yes. But Ma’d pout, and then he wouldn’t.”
The other girl had an inspiration of generosity. “I’ll ask my pa to take us both.”
Her friend’s raptures were cut short by the peremptory summons of the bell.
Fourteen children trooped in and divided themselves by sex on the wooden benches, six boys and eight girls. They represented the aristocracy of the township: the prosperous agriculturists, the millers, distillers, factory owners and professional men. As the school had been open a week, there were no initiatory exercises, but Prof. Larrabee made an effusive little speech, welcoming the two new pupils.
He was a brisk little wisp of a man with a straggling chin whisker, a loose, benevolent mouth and sore eyes; a competent pedagogue of the standard branches. His wife, large, placid and slow, had charge of the elegancies and accomplishments. Their joint instruction was well worth the eight dollars per term with extras which they charged.
Besides the new pupils, the early enrollment was made up of the Fairlie twins, Grace and Freegrace; Bathsheba Eddy; Mary Vandowzer, whose father, the maltster, though wealthy and well-considered, still spoke both the high and the low German better than he did English; Jane Eliza Evernghim; and “Happy” (christened Happalonia) Vallance, these on the distaff side; while across the aisle sat Marcus Dillard, scion of the big peppermint still, exuding a pervasive bouquet of the trade; the two Evernghim lads, George W. and De Witt C.; Jared Upcraft, son of the Honest Lawyer; little Arlo Barnes of the ropewalk, a hardy stripling who paddled to town in summer and skated or walked in winter; and the handsome Philip Macy, youngest of the brood of Col. Gerald Macy, whose scientific cultivation of hemp along Red Creek had made him a comfortable fortune.
The morning procedure comprised an announcement from Prof. Larrabee, delivered with pardonable pride, that his was the only school in the Americas which included medical supervision as part of the curriculum, and he had the privilege and honor of introducing Dr. Gail Murchison, a certificated licensee of physical and chirurgical science.
Dr. Murchison beamed benevolently upon his “little friends” as he called them in his purring, professional accents, while he smoothed his patriarchal beard with fingers none too clean. Medical practice, he imparted to his hearers, was a high calling to be pursued in a spirit of helpfulness and sacrifice and not in expectation of earthly gain. He, himself, strove to be a friend to the poor and helpless without reward. (This would, indeed, have been news to that element of the populace.) He hoped that each of his little hearers would regard himself or herself as a little angel of mercy, seeking out the needy, sustaining the sick and weak, and reporting to him such cases as they found.
Dinty nudged her bench-neighbor, Freegrace Fairlie. She sensed possibilities in this. It combined good works, variety and adventure in pleasing prospect.
The speaker would now, gratis and at no charge, individually examine each little pupil. The examination was brief. The good physician cast a sapient glance at the protruded tongue, felt the pulse, with his head cocked to one side like a thoughtful blackbird, asked one question about digestive processes which brought a resentful flush to Dinty’s cheek. She considered her intestinal timetable a distinctly personal matter. The speaker made entry in a ledger, adjured one and all to be good little boys and girls and to mind their kind teachers, and withdrew.
Dinty would have liked to consult him as to methods of charitable visitation but lacked opportunity. Her immediate concern was so to impress the master and mistress of the school with her smartness that she might have the same lessons as Wealthia, which they would study together. As she was precocious in all that concerned books, whereas her older friend took only a languid and mechanistic interest in learning, her preference being for dress and amusements, this was not difficult. Prof, and Mrs. Larrabee congratulated themselves upon these newest accessions, on the grounds of Wealthia’s prettiness and popularity and Araminta’s manifest cleverness. They added to the bon ton of the establishment, said Mrs. Larrabee who taught the higher aspirants French.
Hours were from eight-thirty to noon, and from one to four. At recess Dinty was so full of excitement that she could hardly eat her dinner. Assuming that this was the stimulus of the school, her parents questioned her at length. Do what she would to satisfy the parental interest, the child’s mind was on a higher, starrier world. She did not dare broach the dangerous topic of the evening’s theatrical entertainment as yet. First, Wealthia must see whether she could prevail upon her saturnine father to include the small friend in the evening festivity.
Happily Mr. Genter Latham was in fine humor that afternoon. Through a combination of business acumen and political influence, he had taken over a contract to excavate ten miles of the Erie Canal, on the Western Section, and it was now progressing so rapidly that he was able to estimate a minimum profit of fifteen thousand dollars. The usual chilly gray of his deep-set eyes warmed when they rested on his daughter.
“Ask Araminta Jerrold?” he repeated. “Why not?”
“Oh, Pa! Aren’t you sweet! I do love you! But I’m so scared they won’t let her go.”
“Pooh! Stuff and nonsense! Why shouldn’t they? I’ll go there with you and put it to them. There’s a matter which I wish to talk over with Squire Jerrold anyway.”
To give importance to the mission, Mr. Latham ordered out his gig, to which he drove his pair of roans, tandem. In any other resident this would have been regarded as hifalutin, but with Genter Latham, nobody had the temerity to remark upon it. People respected his wealth, his power, and, above these, his black temper. He brooked no impertinence, as one corner wit who had ventured a derisive commentary upon “nose-to-tail drivin’ ” learned at the cost of having a well-directed whiplash cut a weal across his cheek from a distance of seven yards.
The Jerrolds welcomed the Lathams with polite warmth. Inwardly Archibald Jerrold considered them as one of the very few—possibly half a dozen—families of the township entitled to social equality with himself. Apart from this, he felt no special attraction to Genter Latham. Few did. The visitor, over a hospitable glass of genuine French brandy, came at once to the point.
“How would you like to undertake a further transaction with me, Squire?”
“I might consider it,” was the cautious reply. Transactions entered into with Mr. Latham were not invariably profitable to the party of the second part. The Squire was beginning to doubt whether he would come clear on his present canal project.
The younger man knew that the Jerrold fortune was waning. Wool-raising was less assured than it had been in the days when Archibald Jerrold had founded his fortunes upon the high prices occasioned by the depredations of the swarming wolves, now pretty well killed off. Furthermore, the hard times of 1817 had hit him, whereas Genter Latham, having funds set apart and waiting opportunity, turned the crisis to good account, buying up rich bottom lands at seventy-five cents an acre, selling the timber, and planting the clearings to hemp, mint and grain. Men said with awe that he must be worth close on to one hundred thousand dollars, that there was no time when he could not, at need, touch as much as ten thousand dollars, cash. Of no other in all that region could as much be said, except of the Geneseo magnates, Squire Wadsworth and Col. Hopkins. Secured loans at twelve percent and conservative investments at ten kept the Latham income at a high level.
Jerrold asked, with affected indifference, “What is the nature of this venture?”
“A sizable contract east of here is in the market. The present contractor is in embarrassments. You and I might pick up a pretty penny there.”
“I’m sickening of the damned canal,” said the Squire gloomily. “There’s nothing but worry in it. What does it bring to any locality that it invades? Fever and disease. Lawlessness and rapine and immorality. Conflict between the respectable citizenry and the wild Irish. Corruption of the lower classes and unsettlement of trade.”
“And money,” grinned the financier. “Don’t forget the money, Squire.”
Drawing to him a sheet of paper and a pencil, he began to cipher. Men said (and often with rueful conviction) that Genter Latham could make figures perform the magic of Mesmer. With fascinated eyes, the Squire watched the swift development of the proof.
So many units of labor at fifty cents per day per man, or twelve dollars and found by the month, to remove so many cubic yards of soil. Log houses for shelter to be cut from ownerless timberland. Provender? Flour, potatoes and all vegetables were at bottom prices, while for meat there was pork, pickled fish and game. Wild fowl and venison could be had almost at the price of the powder. With a quart allowance of whisky on Sundays the working force could be kept hearty and happy on one dollar-and-a-quarter or less per week. Get a good, rough-and-tumble overseer at three dollars a day and the backer could sleep through the contract while the balances piled up in his favor.
Squire Jerrold had heard it all before. Nevertheless he could not help but be impressed by the confident voice, the slick array of numerals.
“Ah, well,” said the tempter, tossing aside his pencil, “give it your leisurely consideration, Squire. I leave it to your recognized business judgment. Tasty brandy, this. Excellent!”
They took another glass, lightly tempered with water, after which they joined the ladies. Genter Latham brought up the matter of the play. Jerrold’s eyes lighted up.
“I might join you, myself,” he said.
“Very pleased,” said Mr. Latham politely.
“Oh, Archibald!” protested his consort in a dying voice.
Perceiving the prospect of tears, Squire Jerrold sighed. “Very well, very well, my dear. But there can be no objection to our daughter attending a performance endorsed by press and pulpit.”
Dinty danced out of the parlor on air, to dress up in her church-best.
That evening was an experience of more than mortal exaltation. Seated between Wealthia and Mr. Latham, the child clutched first one and then the other as if to preserve herself from being lifted bodily into the air and floated away upon the tumultuous tide of emotion. She sobbed over the woes of George Barnwell’s ill-fated lady-love; she shrieked aloud when the misguided young man’s dagger pierced the rich uncle’s heart; she shook from head to foot when the miscreant was led forth, exuding moral precepts at every step, to meet his gallows-doom. In vain did the sophisticated Wealthia, herself somewhat shaken, point out that it was not real. Dinty continued to shiver with horror long after the final curtain fell upon the last tidbit of moralization.
Then what an uplift to the stricken spirit! Part II was pure delight. Could this merry wight who sang so entrancingly the excruciatingly comic ditties of “Dame Durden” be the same actor whom she had but now seen racked with his impending fate? Yes, there was the name: Mr. Archbold. And Mr. Clarendon, who was so pitifully old and feeble as the slain uncle, dancing like an amiable goblin as he convulsed his audience with the risible sayings promised in the program. Miss Gilbert, too, how gay, how arch, how bewitching she proved to be, all her woes forgotten! And another charmer, Miss Sylvia Sartie, whose genius had been all but smothered in the part of the maid, now enticed the hearts of all, as the program had truthfully foretold. “Dame Durden,” for Dinty’s money! She would have liked to see it all over again.
The clear treble of her delight rang infectiously. She seized every opportunity for furious and prolonged applause. Her enthusiasm brought an unforeseen and incredible reward. The dainty, the vivacious, the lovely nymph who played the soubrette part was singling her out for her nods and becks and wreathed smiles. (Dinty remembered that line from the hymn book. Or perhaps it wasn’t the hymn book. It didn’t seem quite hymnal.)
“Did you see?” she breathed ecstatically in the intermission. “She was singing right at us.”
“I noticed it, too,” agreed Wealthia, enraptured.
Mr. Latham’s Mephistophelian chuckle dispelled the roseate dream. “Not exactly, I fear,” said he.
“But, Father!” “But, Mr. Latham!” the two childish voices united in protest.
“I saw her,” said Dinty.
“I heard her,” said Wealthia.
“She almost winked,” said Dinty.
“Doubtless.” He lowered his voice. “There’s a handsome young man in the seat back of us,” he murmured. “I suspect him of being the object of the young lady’s attentions. Eyes front!” Mr. Latham had served in the militia.
The admonition came too late. Both children had twisted around. A soft-breathed “Oh!” of recognition came to their lips. It was the young gentleman of “serious asspeckt” whose arrival Dinty had entered in her diary.
Their disillusionment was assuaged by the chaste delights of Part III. They contorted themselves with mirth over the comic song, “Cherry-cheeked Patty.” They wept unashamedly at “Robin Adair,” rendered by Mr. Wilshire, the heavy, in a tremolo baritone that quivered in their heartstrings, and they went into final collapse over Mr. Archbold’s Scotch dialect in his inimitable double characterization of the two ridiculous lovers, “Watty and Maggy.” Finally it was over, and—crowning glory!—Mr. Latham was offering them sticky-sweet ebulum in the tavern parlor. As befitted so fine and public a place, they sat up, very ladylike, and conversed in esoteric references, intended to leave any eavesdropper unenlightened.
“Oh, Wealthy! Don’t you dote on Mr. C.?”
“I prefer Mr. A. He’s so romantic.”
“But Mr. C. is so witty.”
“What lovely whiskers Mr. W. has! And such a—a throbby voice.”
“Do you think they’re real? I’ve heard that they put them on.”
“So they do,” said the experienced Wealthia. “And they paint their faces. That’s what makes them so beautiful. I’m going to be an actress. Like Miss S.”
“I think she’s a bold hussy,” said Dinty. “Making eyes at gentlemen she doesn’t know.”
“You can’t tell,” said Wealthia sagely. “Maybe he frequents theatrical associations.”
“Oo-ooh!” breathed Dinty. “Could he be a desprit rakehell? Oh, look!”
The charmer and the stranger passed the door in close communion.
“Let’s peek,” whispered Dinty, shameless where her curiosity about the ever-interesting human race was enlisted.
Opportunely Mr. Latham had gone across the parlor to speak to acquaintances. The girls scuttled into the hallway, stopping before a small room near the outer door. A murmur of voices warned them to go carefully. Dinty was first to project a cautious head.
The fair Miss Sartie was seated in a chair, her face uplifted in invitation to the young man who gazed adoringly down into her eyes. Such, at least, was Dinty’s interpretation of the tableau. The immediate sequel dispelled it. The stranger opened a black bag, took out a bottle, poured a few careful drops of liquid into a small container and applied it, first to one, then the other of the lady’s lustrous eyes. The two small spies uttered a simultaneous squawk as a firm grip retracted them from their observation post. Mr. Latham was grimly amused.
“Taking private stock of our new doctor, I see.”
“Certainly. And an enterprising specimen, I judge. Did you think you were witnessing a Romeo-and-Juliet passage? Haven’t you had enough drama for one evening?” He rubbed his chin beard thoughtfully. “That young man loses no time,” he observed.
Dinty bobbed a curtsey. “Thank you, sir, for a pleasurable and instructive evening.”
The Lathams drove her home, then returned to their own large and gloomy mansion. Genter Latham was well pleased with his day. His cleverly devised appeal to the avarice which, by his theory of human nature, was the mainspring of men’s motives, was working favorably upon Archibald Jerrold. An honorable man, the Squire, but not over-keen in financial matters. If Jerrold took the bait, it was his partner’s plan to keep the stretches of hard soil and the lock locations for himself—there was good money in lock-building—and turn over to his neighbor such sections as might develop “soft” areas. Let Jerrold take the risks. If all went well, he would make a fair profit. If not, it was no skin off the predatory Latham nose.
Mr. Jerrold was smoking and reading in his library when Dinty danced in, eager to tell him all about the wonderful evening. He could be relied upon to be a sympathetic and amused listener. First she pulled off her network mitts and breathed tenderly on her hands. He smiled at her.
“Sore paws again, little daughter?”
“That’s from clapping so hard.” She examined the palms. “The blisters are almost healed.” She launched into excited panegyrics of the evening’s entertainment and the actors for five uninterrupted minutes, after which she considered her hands again. “Pa,” she said confidentially, “do you believe that treasure is always found on a south slope?”
“Which hill?”
“Sampson Farm rise.”
“That’s a good three miles from here. A long distance for a little girl alone at night,” said he gravely.
“I wasn’t alone. Tip Crego took me.”
“That halfbreed!” said Squire Jerrold with displeasure.
“Tip isn’t a halfbreed,” returned Dinty warmly. “Not even a quarter. There’s only a teeny bit of Indian in him. Just enough to make him Chief of our tribe.”
“Tribe? What tribe?”
“The gold hunters. They’re all from Poverty’s Pinch but me. They dig in the dark of the moon. Tip’s been promising to take me ever so long, but I wasn’t to tell anyone. So you mustn’t peach on us, Pa.”
“I won’t. But I don’t like you to associate with those ragamuffins and cheapjacks from the Pinch.”
“I don’t believe Tip is a cheapjack. He wants to find gold so he can go to college and be a learned scholar of the sciences.”
“Indeed! Well, little daughter, you go to bed and don’t dream about treasure. We shall dredge our new fortunes out of Mr. Clinton’s ditch, not out of a hillside. Nobody’s found gold there yet.”
“Maybe I’ll be the one,” she said brightly. She added with an effect of profound conviction, “You never can tell till you try. That’s my motto. I write it every day at the top of my exercise.”
“People who take that for their guiding principle get into plenty of trouble,” warned her father, smiling.
“I don’t care,” said the child stoutly. “They have fun. And how else are you going to find out about everything?”
“I don’t know,” admitted the Squire.
He drew her to him and kissed her good night, a manifestation of affection generally frowned upon as tending to spoil the young.