Horace’s return to the village was a triumphal progress. Shaking off his admirers, he sought out the Merry Fiddler. Tip Crego limped out on deck to meet him.
“We heard about it,” he said joyously. “A canoe just came past. Where’s Captain Tugg?”
“At the doctor’s. He wouldn’t let me patch him up. Make up your bundle.”
“Can I quit?” cried Tip.
“Here’s your indenture. We’re going home.”
Tip’s joy over his release overbore the natural reticence of his Indian blood. He laughed, and would have danced but for the damaged knee. The doctor examined and rebandaged it as soon as they were aboard.
“Now I can go to college,” the boy exulted. “I’ve kept up in my books.”
Horace was glum. “I can’t help you, Tip. I can hardly make my living.”
“I heard about that, sir,” said the boy.
“Did you? How?”
“I meet up with the gyppos sometimes. The gyppos know everything.”
Horace suppressed the temptation to ask how much the gyppos knew about Wealthia Latham. A bugle-catch outside brought him to the path. Silverhorn beamed brightly upon him. Silverhorn was pleasurably drunk.
“I’ve been standing drinks,” said he. “Topside, downside and alongside. If I was in Albany, I would be elected mayor of Albany. If I was in Utica, I would be elected mayor of Utica. I could also be mayor of Syracuse and maybe New York, if I wanted to take the pains. Name your potion.”
Horace declined the drink. The jaunty sportsman removed his neckcloth, spread it carefully upon the ground, and proceeded to discharge his pockets into it. Gold, silver, copper, notes current, notes uncurrent, a watch, a compass, a jeweled brooch, a table knife, a gilt ring and a fistful of geegaws made up the sum of his takings.
“One hundred twelve dollars and the extras,” he reckoned. “And the half of it is yours, young Æsculapius; the half of it is yours.”
“Thanks, Silverhorn. But I can’t take your money.”
“Now, by Noah’s navel, you can and shall! Didn’t you win it for me? Pop!” said Silverhorn delightedly. “Pop! And over he keeled. The big son-of-a-bitch! Made a fine hole in the water.” Scooping up a double handful of the specie, he extended it to his companion.
In the interests of comity, Horace compromised by accepting the compass for himself and the brooch for Dinty. Silverhorn stowed the remainder in various pockets, and said, “I did you a turn today, didn’t I, Æsculapius?”
“You did, surely. Without your advice I shouldn’t have known how to fight him.”
“Now you can do me a turn.”
“What is it?”
“Be my post office.”
Horace frowned. “That’s your price, is it?”
“Carry a letter. Just one little letter.”
“What good will that do anyone, Silverhorn? Let the girl alone.”
“What if she doesn’t want to be let alone?”
“You’ve no right to assume it. I’ll do anything else for you, but I can’t carry messages in that quarter. For one matter, I’m not on terms with Miss Latham.”
“Your wife is,” returned the other who seemed to be surprisingly well informed in the premises. “Will you do this much, then? Will you take a message from that quarter, if there is one for me? Leave it to the girl, herself. Does she know that I’m back on the Ditch? She’ll know anyhow, come spring, for the Jolly Roger will be on the Main Haul by then. My respects to your lady wife, and will she ask her friend whether she ever got my letter and is there an answer? Is that too much to ask?”
“I’ll go that far,” agreed Horace reluctantly.
Silverhorn seemed quite sober now. “You can reach me at the Lock Port Inn. Good-bye and fortune’s luck to you, Æsculapius. You’re a likely man of your hands.” He turned away, but came back at once, his face both morose and exultant. “Hell and all its fires won’t keep me from her,” he said deep in his throat. “You can freight that along to her or not as you choose, Æsculapius. It won’t matter. She knows it.”
As the straight, slender back disappeared, Horace lost himself in surmise. What would Ramsey do if ever he learned that the girl had conceived a child by another man? Go murder-mad perhaps. One day he must know it. Everybody would know it. For Horace still cherished the ineradicable conviction that eventually that somber truth would out, though it might not be through any procurement of his.
Three days of alternate sailing and towing, neither wounded occupant being fit for the oars, brought the batteau to home port. Dinty welcomed her old playmate joyously, exclaiming over his emaciated condition and insisting that he must stay with them until he was recovered. Quaila Crego’s claim, however, took precedence. The boy went back to Poverty’s Pinch. He made daily visits to his benefactor, bringing in, as before, roots, plants and berries for his medicaments. His account of the towpath battle turned Dinty breathless. By his worshipful saga, second-hand though it was, Horace was a superior composite of David, Ulysses, Richard Coeur de Lion and George Washington. She proudly wore Silverhorn’s brooch, as an incentive to acquaintances to ask her for the story, but in private admonished the hero that henceforth he was to eschew combat as, in the terms of her informal Latin, infra his professional dig.
“No worry,” Tip told her. “There’s not a tough on the Ditch that would tackle him now. Not even Silverhorn, himself.”
Dinty gathered her courage for another attack. “Doc, could you be mistaken about its being Kin?”
“I’m so certain that I’m writing to Colonel Hayne.”
“Kin’s father? Oh, Doc!”
“Somebody has to help her if Genter Latham kicks her out when the truth is forced on him. The Haynes ought to do it.”
“You mustn’t write them, darling,” she pleaded.
“I must and shall.”
“Haven’t his people had enough suffering? You don’t really know that it was Kin.”
“It was somebody. Are you suggesting that Wealthia has been promiscuous?”
“No,” returned Dinty indignantly.
“Yet you won’t allow that it was Hayne.”
“In my heart I’ve never believed it.”
“Who’s your candidate?” he inquired sardonically, and answered himself. “Silverhorn Ramsey, I suppose. Well, my darling romanticist, you’re one hundred percentum wrong, and science proves it.”
“Pooh for your science!” retorted Dinty.
“Silverhorn couldn’t be the father of Wealthia’s child. He couldn’t be the father of anyone’s child.”
“Why not?”
“Professional secret.”
“I know he had the bad disease, if that’s your professional secret. Witch Crego told me that long ago. But that wouldn’t prevent him making a baby.”
“Wouldn’t it?” he retorted condescendingly. “Undoubtedly you keep abreast of the latest discoveries of Science, but a few things may have escaped you.”
For the moment, however, she was more concerned with the Hayne family. After much and specious cajoling, she extracted a promise that he would hold the projected letter, at least until there was a change in the Latham status.
At the first opportunity she set herself to prowl through the files of the professional journals which Horace read with such religious faith. A year-old volume of a defunct publication calling itself the Physician’s Eclectic turned up the information. Therein a prolix writer proved, to his own satisfaction, that men afflicted with venereal ailments were sterile for at least three years after the incidence of the disease, and bolstered his theory with impressively tabulated figures.
Like so many physicians of that day (and not a few of the present) Horace Amlie believed in the immaculate conception of statistics. Dinty knew how trustingly his mind would accept those serried numerals. It did appear, she confessed to herself, as if the laborious compiler must know what he was doing. And yet …
Silverhorn’s message was now in her keeping.
“I can’t force you to deliver it if you don’t want to,” Horace informed her with an enigmatic glance and half-smile.
“I’ll deliver it. Not for Captain Ramsey, but for Wealthia.”
“Do as you please. I see nothing but trouble in it.”
“Maybe she won’t think so.”
“You’re still possessed of the idea that she is enamored of him?”
Dinty’s lips formed the thin, red line of obstinacy.
“How could she have been?” he argued. “If she were, would she have gotten herself into the mess with Kinsey Hayne?”
“You’re a very wise and wonderful medico, Doc,” his wife observed, “but you don’t know quite everything about women.”
Dinty found Wealthia in the garden and bluntly discharged her errand. The girl whitened.
“I—I don’t want to see him.”
“Shall I tell him that’s your last word?”
“No, don’t.”
“Did you get his other letters?”
“Yes.”
“He had no answer, he told Horace.”
“I was frightened. I’m frightened now.”
“That’s dumb. I never was afraid of any man in my life,” boasted Dinty, and qualified it. “We—ell, perhaps a little of Doc when he gets very mad with me. What will you do when Captain Ramsey comes back on this run?”
“I’ll go away,” said her friend wildly. “I won’t stay here.”
“Wealthy, you ought to get married. You’ve had heaps of chances.”
“Oh, I have chances enough,” returned the girl dully.
“Why don’t you, then?”
“I’ll never marry.”
“Because of Kinsey?” asked Dinty softly.
Wealthia flinched. “Don’t! Talk about something else or go home. I hear Tip Crego is back.”
They discussed the returned fugitive, and out of that conversation Dinty took back to her husband a surprising bit of news.
“Doc, what do you think?”
“I think you’ve probably been making a sentimental ninny of yourself.”
“Wait till you hear. Wealthy wants to send Tip to Hamilton.”
“Good Lord! What’s got into her?”
“It seems to be a sort of thank-offering to Heaven, by what I can make out.”
He pulled a sour face. “What has she got to be so thankful about? Attempted infanticide?”
“Aren’t you cruel! She’ll pay all his fees. Does he still want to go?”
“He’ll jump at the chance.”
So it was arranged that Tip should share the physician’s voyages as assistant, receiving tuition as opportunity offered. Thus, under the lax requirements then prevailing, he would be qualified to enter in the winter term. It was a satisfactory arrangement all around.
With a capacity for piecing information together, the boy, while in town, picked up enough from old associates at the Pinch and from village gossip to gain a pretty good notion of his doctor’s dilemma. One day he came to Dinty.
“Dinty, I’ve got something I want to ask the Doctor.”
“What about?”
“Wealthy.”
“He won’t talk about her.”
“Maybe he would to me.”
“Not to anyone.”
“There’s something I could tell him that might help him.”
“Tell me.”
Tip looked embarrassed. “It isn’t something a fellow would talk about to a lady.”
“I’m not a lady. I’m Dinty. And I’m married. To a doctor. There isn’t much I don’t know. Don’t be dumb.”
“Dinty, why did that Mr. Hayne kill himself?”
“Why do you think? And how much do you know?”
He hesitated long before replying. “I know that Wealthy was in trouble. I think the Doctor knew it, too, and told Mr. Latham and Mr. Latham wouldn’t believe it and that’s what caused all the row.”
“How do you know Wealthy was in trouble?”
“She went to Satch Fammie.”
“I know that. I was with her.”
“Not that time. This was later.”
“Did Satch Fammie do something to her?”
“She didn’t dare. She was too far gone.”
“That must have been before Kinsey Hayne knew anything,” reflected Dinty, reckoning dates.
“Mr. Hayne? How would he know?”
“I know I can trust you, Tip. Doc believes that Kin Hayne got Wealthy that way and couldn’t face it. That’s why he killed himself.”
“Mr. Hayne? He didn’t get her that way.”
“Tip! Do you know what you’re talking about?”
“Certes, I do.”
“Who do you think it was?”
“I don’t think. I know. Silverhorn Ramsey.”
“And I know it couldn’t have been.”
“Why couldn’t it? He took her to Satch Fammie himself and offered a lot of money. Would he do that unless he were the one?”
She pressed her hands over her eyes. “But—but—there’s something else; another reason. Oh, Tip! Are you sure?”
“Hasn’t she always been mad over him? Have you forgotten that day under the hill? Aunt Quaila knows when this happened. It was a year ago last spring.”
“The barn-raising at Manchester!” exclaimed Dinty. She remembered that telltale straw embedded in the black tresses.
Tip nodded. “Wealthia ran away from the party and met Silverhorn in a loft. It had been fixed up between them beforehand. Mr. Hayne followed and brought her back. I don’t know where he found her nor what kind of story she made up for him. Wealthy’s slick as a mink when she’s so minded. He couldn’t have known about Silverhorn.”
“Oh, poor Kin! Poor, poor Kin!” mourned Dinty.
If Tip was right, in what a different pattern the whole involved and pitiful tragedy unrolled itself! Kinsey guiltless, Wealthia at first afraid to confess to him, though too honorable to marry him while carrying on the intrigue with the canaller, for doubtless the intimacy had been repeated. Cornered because of Horace’s quixotic and ill-inspired visit to Kinsey with a view to setting matters aright, she was forced into her confession. It drove him to suicide.
“But Silverhorn couldn’t …” No, she was not going into that with Tip. “Where’s the child?” she demanded.
“Maybe she went away and had it fixed. There are others besides Satch Fammie,” said Tip darkly.
Dinty bethought her of the Syracuse visit. But Horace had discovered her condition since then.
“She hasn’t been away,” she asserted. “And she couldn’t have it done here in Palmyra without somebody knowing.”
“I don’t understand it then,” he confessed. “But you can see now why I want to tell the Doctor about it.”
“Never! You mustn’t. I won’t let you.”
“Why not?” he asked, amazed at her vehemence.
“Tip,” she said tightly, “if you breathe a word of it to Doc, I’ll never forgive you. You don’t know how awful it would be.”
“No, I don’t. You’d better tell me.”
“Tip, Doc has made a terrible mistake. When he found that Wealthy was pregnant, he went straight to Kinsey Hayne to make him marry her. When Kin denied it and called him a liar for scandalizing Wealthy’s good name, there was an awful row. Then she must have owned up to Kin or anyway told him she couldn’t marry him. He wrote a letter to my husband.”
“What did it say?”
“I never dared ask. Doc burned it. It made him very sad. I think he was disappointed in Kin. You see, he was so sure that Kin was the father.”
“But wouldn’t Mr. Hayne have denied it?”
“You never can tell about those Southerners. They’re so lofty-minded about women. Maybe he thought it would be easier for Wealthia if he took the blame. I don’t know just how much he did know, but Wealthia must have told him something. Enough to drive him to suicide. So, when he killed himself, that was absolute proof to Doc that he was responsible for Wealthy’s condition and wasn’t man enough to marry her. If Doc learned the truth now, I don’t know what it would do to him. He’d blame himself for poor Kin’s death.”
“There’s no sense in that,” objected Tip. “Wouldn’t Mr. Hayne have done it, anyway?”
“Of course he would. He was so mad over Wealthy. But you don’t know my Doc. Nothing would ever persuade him that it wasn’t his fault. With all the rest he’s got on his mind, it would drive him crazy.”
Impressed, the boy said, “You know best, Dinty. I’m sorry I told you.”
“No. It’s a good thing you did.”
“Why?”
“I can have it out now with Wealthy. I’ve been wanting to get the truth out of her for ever so long.”
At the stone house she found her friend packing a hamper of charities, to take to Poverty’s Pinch, one of the good works to which she was increasingly devoting herself. Dinty said,
“Can anyone hear us?”
The girl’s eyes widened in alarm. “No. What is it? Has something happened?”
“Nothing.” She set her two strong young hands on the other’s shoulders. Of the two she seemed now immeasurably the older and firmer. “Wealthy Latham,” she said, “I want the truth from you.”
The beauty cringed away, twisting in the grip of the hands, turning her face to avoid the solemn and searching eyes.
“This is dead secret,” Dinty went on. “I’ll never breathe a word.” She reverted to the formula of solemn childhood. “Cross my heart and double-die. I won’t even tell Doc. But I’m going to have the truth from you, Wealthy. Was it Silverhorn Ramsey?”
Wealthia quivered like an animal. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Where is the baby?”
“There isn’t any.”
“Don’t lie to me. Or”—her voice softened—“did it die?”
“No. There never was any.”
“Wealthy!”
“There wasn’t! There wasn’t! There wasn’t! It’s God’s truth. I thought there was. I was sure of it. For months. Oh, Dinty, what a hell in life I lived! I wanted to die. Then—nothing.”
“You didn’t get rid of it?”
“I swear in God’s name, I didn’t. Nobody would help me. I was almost crazy. And then—it was all a mistake. God was better to me than I deserved,” she went on humbly. “Oh, Dinty! I’ve been such a wicked little fool! But I couldn’t help myself. I’d do it all again if he came back. That’s why I must never see him again. How can I make you understand?” She broke the hold of those imperative hands and threw herself into a chair, convulsed. “I don’t care whether you believe me or not,” she sobbed. “It’s true, every word of it.”
Dinty had to believe her. She was appalled. Where did that leave her adored Doc? And what of that theory of sterility to which he had pinned his faith? Dinty’s brain whirled.