No great intelligence was required to tell Dinty that all was not well between Horace and his most important family. How deep the breach was she did not know until he said abruptly across the dinner table,
“I’m out of a job with the Lathams.”
“That’s too bad,” said Dinty.
“A difference over diagnosis.”
She held her peace.
“Mr. Latham called in Dr. Murchison.”
“That old noodlepate!”
“Noodlepate or not, his diagnosis was preferred to mine.”
“I think you know more than any doctor in the world,” said Dinty defiantly.
“Genter Latham doesn’t. He dismissed me like a lackey.”
“Because you wouldn’t knuckle down,” said she shrewdly.
“We’ll manage without ’em, Puss,” said he.
“Wealthy’s acting queerly,” observed Dinty. “I don’t understand her lately.”
“Be patient with her,” advised Horace. “Nerves,” he added vaguely.
In the fortnight after this talk, Dinty saw her friend only on the street. Being forthright by nature, she marched herself up to the stone house to make an issue. Wealthia came down, pale, languid and queerly apprehensive.
“Why haven’t you been to see me?” Dinty demanded.
“Pa wouldn’t like it.”
“Much that would stop you! You always do as you please.”
Wealthia’s deep eyes dimmed with tears. Dinty ran to her; threw comforting arms about her. “Wealthy! Dearie one! Are you so sick?”
“No. I’m—I’m better. What has your husband told you?”
“Nothing. He doesn’t talk to me about his cases.”
Wealthia detached herself and sat down heavily. “He and Pa have had a quarrel.”
“I know that much. They’ll make it up.”
“They’ll never make this up. Never.”
“Wealthy, you’re frightened,” said her friend pityingly. “Don’t you want to tell me what it is?”
The girl put her hand to her side. “Nobody will help me,” she said wretchedly. “Horace won’t. And now Old Murch won’t. They’ll be sorry when I die!” She began to sob.
“Darling! You’re not going to die. Horace says you’re not.”
“I don’t care whether I do or not. Oh, Dinty, let’s not talk about it.”
“No, honey,” said Dinty soothingly. “But I do think you look better than when I last saw you.”
“Do you? Do you truly? Sometimes I think I feel better. Then—I don’t know.”
“What do you hear from Kin?”
“He keeps begging to come here.”
“Naturally. Why don’t you let him?”
“I can’t bear to see him,” she answered somberly. “I can’t bear to have him see me. Not when I’m looking like this.”
“You’re lovely, Wealthy,” averred the loyal friend, not too untruthfully. “You’ve changed. Your face is thinner. But you’re just as beautiful. More so.”
“Faugh!” gulped the girl. “Sometimes I hate myself.”
“Write to him to come,” urged the caller. “It’ll do you good to see him.”
A strange look, which seemed to the startled Dinty to have in it the gleam of sheer, desperate terror, distorted the face before her.
“I have written.”
“When did you tell him to come?”
“He can come when he likes. He won’t come.”
“Of course he will!”
The other shook her head. “I’m tired,” she complained. “Most of the time now, I’m tired.”
Dinty rose and kissed her. “Come and see me,” she said. “You needn’t see Horace if that’s the way you feel.”
“Maybe I will, now that I’m feeling better,” was the listless reply.
Trouble in her mind was apt to drive Dinty to the woods. She could think better in the leafy solitudes. Back of the garden, the abrupt northern declivity of a drumlin overhung the Latham premises. Dinty made a detour to climb the gentler slope and reach a sheltered spot where she could sit and review the unsatisfactory and puzzling encounter.
Thanks to Tip Crego’s training, she could move through brush almost soundlessly. Having reached the summit she turned and was threading her way amidst a sparse scattering of whitethorn, when she halted, stiffening to attentiveness. A whiff of rank tobacco smoke had drifted downwind to her nostrils. She edged back of a thorn-clump and peered out.
A few rods ahead of her a sumach thicket extended to the brink of the hillock. At one spot the foliage was abnormally congested. She wormed her way, bellywise, toward it. As she suspected, the hand of man had been at work. The slender, gray boles were bent and interlaced, the leafage above plaited to form an effective shelter against sun and rain. Beneath the cover, a man sat, puffing an ash-knurl pipe. It was Dad Hinch, the Human Teapot.
Dinty’s first thought was to withdraw as secretly as she had approached. A dull gleam of metal changed her mind for her. The Teapot’s service musket was propped within reach of his hand. Nothing in the way of game would be moving in the vista below. Therefore, to Dinty’s logical mind, it appeared alarmingly plain that if the exsoldier intended to shoot anything from his hiding place, it must be a human and presumptively a Latham. That she might, herself, be courting danger did not occur to her. In her view, the Teapot was no more than an irresponsible looby. She stepped out into the open, whistling. Dad Hinch jumped to his feet, stared about him, caught sight of her, and stood to attention.
“ ’Day to you, Mistress,” he said.
“Good day, Dad. What are you doing here?”
“Capting’s orders, ma’am,” said he importantly.
“Who are you going to shoot with that gun?”
“Nobody, Mistress. A good sojer allus carries his weepon.”
A flicker of white caught her notice. The Teapot had looped a length of string over a convenient twig. Knots at intervals indicated a pattern. Dinty required no exegesis to explain its purpose. This was a familiar recourse of gypsies, tenkers and other unlettered folk to keep record of fact, time and persons. The whole layout was patent enough to her now. Dad Hinch, an experienced scout and a faithful henchman of her husband, had been set on sentry duty to maintain a watch on the Latham family, make a record, and report to his principal. But what did it mean? What could it mean?
To attempt secrecy with her husband on this matter would be futile. The Human Teapot would assuredly have knotted her into his string. At supper she said,
“I saw Dad Hinch today.”
“Where?”
“On the knob, back of the Lathams’.”
He scowled. “What were you doing there?”
“I’d been to see Wealthia.”
“It’s a roundabout way home.”
“I felt like being alone.”
“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.