Winter loomed, a grisly threat to the Amlies. With the closing of canal traffic, Horace’s source of income stopped. They could still live. Unk Zeb had accumulated a noble woodpile; there was no danger of freezing. Dinty’s industrious chickens, the family cow and sundry barrels containing salted pork, pickled eels and Lake Ontario sturgeon, insured them against hunger. But other expenses must be met with cash. They faced a harshly straitened future.
Horace was fretful. He had tried his hand at odds and ends of employment, only to find himself blocked by the Latham influence. Dinty found him one day in his empty and chilly office, poring over an advertisement clipped from the local weekly.
We are in want of a good post rider to circulate our paper through Macedon, Port Gibson, etc. We seek an apprentice who is disposed to be industrious—to abhor and shun the haunts of vice and the company of obscene and pilfering youth—and who would detest the idea of embezzling his employer’s money. Opposite characters need not apply. We are heartily sick of them and will not keep them. Good encouragement will be given to the right individual.
GRANDIN & TUCKER, Proprs.
“Just the thing for Tip!” said Dinty enthusiastically. Horace looked hastily away from her smile. “I wasn’t thinking of it for Tip.”
“Doc!” she cried in dismay. “You couldn’t.”
“It’s honest employment,” he pointed out. “It would fetch in cash, not much, but regular. And—” he forced a grin—“Fleetfoot needs exercise.”
“But, Doc,” she wailed. “Post riding! A man of your learning!”
“We’ve got to live, Puss. The question is whether they’ll give me the job.”
“They’d better be proud to have you.”
“Genter Latham owns a share in the paper.”
“I wish he was dead!”
“Unfortunately, I’ve never seen him looking better. He is now forwarding a movement to vote Dominie Strang out of his pulpit.”
“Because he stuck by us,” said his wife bitterly. “How hateful! Can he do that, Horace?”
“He can do almost anything in this town,” returned he gloomily.
Her chin went up. “Except drive us out.”
“He’ll never stop trying.”
In his shiny coat, but with boots polished, and neckcloth trimly set, Horace called at the newspaper office. Messrs. Grandin and Tucker exhibited surprise, succeeded by caution. Dr. Amlie’s application would be taken under advisement, and he would be informed later. Horace understood with a sinking heart that they wished to assure themselves against objections by their backer.
No such objections were advanced. Mr. Latham remarked, with his grimmest smile, that it was just about what the young squib was fit for, and added that if he were found some morning in a snowdrift, Palmyra would be none the worse for it.
Horace entered upon the rigorous duties of post riding, growing thinner, hardier, more withdrawn from everyone but Dinty, day by day. Tip Crego had been dispatched to Hamilton College where, thanks to his mentor’s tutelage, he was admitted without difficulty.
February of 1824 was a terrible month. Blizzards closed the roads for days at a time. Horace’s earnings declined to the vanishing point. Unable to cover his route on horseback, he took to snowshoes. He was stormbound in an abandoned woodcutter’s hut overnight and came stumbling home, burning with fever. He made his own diagnosis—pneumonia. To Dinty’s terrified plea that she be allowed to call in Dr. Murchison, he returned a flat negative.
“I’d rather die with my blood still in my veins,” said he, and when she failed to suppress a frightened cry, added with grim determination, “I’m not going to die, Puss. Not and leave a certain bit of business unsettled.”
No explanation was needed as to what the certain piece of business was.
Before he fell into unconsciousness he gave her full directions for his care. Friends rallied to them. Quaila Crego moved in, bag and baggage, to act as nurse. Gwenny Jump, prosperous on the traffic of the Settlement, brought daily delicacies and was hurt when Dinty, as tactfully as she could, declined the offer of a loan. The brotherhood of the smithy was represented openly by the more upstanding element, such as Silas Bewar, O. Daggett, Decker Jessup and Carlisle Sneed, and secretly by the timider souls whose offerings Unk Zeb found on the doorstep of mornings. That stout old son of God, Elder Strang, was a regular visitor and helped buoy Dinty’s spirits when the prospect looked blackest.
Between devoted nursing, exemption from medical attention, his hardy constitution, and a dogged determination to survive, Horace pulled through. Convalescent, he was a handful. Although the disease had left him much depleted, it took all his wife’s management to prevent his going back on the road. If he did not work, he argued, how were they to manage. There was the interest on the note to meet, and after that the town tax. Could they live without money? Dinty answered that she could but that she couldn’t live without him, and that she wasn’t going to let him go out and work himself into a relapse. He must be patient and wait for the opening of the canal. Then they would be all right again.
What galled him worst was the constant appeal of old patients. They crawled or tottered to his door, the sick, the injured, the frightened, begging his aid. It was futile to refer them to Murchison; they had faith only in their Dr. Amlie. So he took the most importunate or unfortunate of them back. He could treat them, gratis, and still be within the law. But how could he afford to dispense the medicines that they so needed? Driven to the risk by their necessities, he accepted pay for some of his drugs. An information was laid against him. Upon the procurement of the Board of Censors he was haled into court and mulcted in the considerable sum of five dollars, with an alternative of ten days in jail.
Dinty quivered from head to foot when haggardly he confessed his imprudence and its direful consequence. Five dollars! Where was she to find it? There was but one recourse, the picklejar which in the days of their carefree prosperity had grown heavy with her pin money, now the hold-all of the household finances. It contained barely enough to cover the interest which came due with such shocking and pitiless regularity.
“I may as well go to jail,” said poor Horace in the depths of contrition. “I’ll be just as much use to you in jail as out.”
She cried out at that. Let Genter Latham gloat over him? For she had no doubt that the magnate was the one who had fomented the charge. Not while there was a dollar in the hoard!
A week before the due-date Horace, still weak and crotchety, was summoning resolution to crawl out of his warm bed into the dank chill of the room, Dinty having long been busy about breakfast, when his heart stirred to the lilt of her voice in that little, absurd song of happiness which he had not heard for long.
Lavender’s blue, diddle-diddle.
Lavender’s green.
When I am king, diddle-diddle,
You shall be queen.
He dressed in haste and came out to find his wife smiling behind the coffee urn which was exhaling a not very coffee-like aroma of parched and roasted oats.
“What are you so cheery about?”
She jumped up, slipped around the table, and kissed him. “I’ve had a—er—communication,” said she importantly.
“Who from?”
“Guess.”
“I can’t guess,” he said dispiritedly.
“Neither can I,” she returned with a trill of laughter. “Look!” She flaunted before his incredulous eyes five greenbacks.
“What are those?” he demanded.
“Forty-two dollars, lawful money,” she gurgled. “Enough for the interest and four shillings over to buy you a new neckcloth.”
He scowled. “Where did it come from?”
“I—don’t—know. There’s the cover they came in. Unk Zeb found it under the door this morning.”
Horace peered at the oblong of folded paper with the broken wax along the edge. It bore, in stiff, unidentifiable capitals, the legend, “Mrs. Horace Amlie, Present.”
“So there’s no mistake about it.” She caroled,
Lavender’s green.
When I am king, diddle-diddle …
“Charity,” he said hoarsely.
She stopped dead. “I don’t care. It’s money.”
“Not our money. You must send it back.”
“Where?”
That stumped him. “We haven’t fallen that low,” he said, but with less conviction. “Whom do you suspect?”
She looked as innocent as a baby. “I haven’t a notion to bless myself with.”
This was not the precise truth. On the previous night, she had heard soft footsteps. And in the morning she had found clear footprints. The heels were delicate and fine; finer than anything of Decker Jessup’s facture. But why follow up the clue? Look so timely a gift horse in the mouth? Not Dinty! Nor would she mention her suspicion to Horace, who was in one of his resentful and stiff-necked moods. It was a boon from Heaven, that benefaction. To question or refuse it would be akin to impiety; certainly base ingratitude. If Wealthia Latham chose to appease her conscience by secret offerings, far be it from Dinty to thwart so helpful an intent. Horace, though, was still feebly conscientious or, as Dinty put it, pernickety.
“We’d better set it aside till we find out,” said he.
At this, Dinty’s wifely spirit of obedience broke. There was an unwonted fire in the blue depths of the eyes that were turned upon him.
“And what about the interest?” she asked with ominous quiet.
“Haven’t we enough for that?”
“You know we haven’t. Not since your fine was paid.”
“I don’t care,” he shouted. “Throw the damned things into the fire.”
She caught the precious notes to her bosom and stood at bay. “You’d let your wife be turned into the street by Genter Latham’s bank?”
“Oh, do as you like!” he groaned.
It was well along in April when the Amlie batteau, extra-loaded with equipment and medicaments, took the water when there was barely the depth to float its shallow draft.
Harsh spring weather beset and slowed the trip. Dinty, worrying at home, grew anxious as a week passed into ten days, and ten days into a fortnight with no Horace and only such casual word of him as she could cull by frequent visits to the locks which were the circulating media of canal news.
On the seventeenth day he stamped up the steps, whistling untunefully, a manifestation which lifted the wife’s heart. It was a token of satisfaction with life which she had not heard for weary months. He bustled in, enveloped her in a bear-grip which heaved her slight form clear of the floor and kissed her hungrily a dozen times. Reaching for the cash-bag at his belt, he tossed it blithely into the air. It fell to the table with a heartening bang and jingle.
“Count that,” he ordered, turning again to her.
“How can I when you’re hugging me?” she protested. “Behave yourself, darling.”
With his arm still around her, she sorted out bills and specie. Wonderment grew to awe as she passed the twenty-dollar mark. At thirty she stopped and kissed him again. At thirty-three she detected a dollar-note which, she suspected, was less current than it should be, and set it aside. Without it the count came to an imposing total of thirty-six dollars and some odd coppers.
“Darling,” she said with a catch of the breath. “We’re rich.”
“We’re liable to be.”
“And you’re well again. And happy. Aren’t you?”
“Who wouldn’t be, with such a wife! I feel like my own man again.”
“You’re not,” she retorted jealously. “You’re mine. Oh, Doc! Isn’t it dicty to be alive! Let’s go and throw a rock through Genter Latham’s window.”
“Have you seen Wealthia?”
“Twice. She’s been here.”
He looked at her with lifted brows of interrogation. She shook her head. That was as near as they now approached the subject which lay, imbedded and irritant like a foreign substance, in both minds.
Prosperity continued to smile on the Amlies, while politics worked underground. Genter Latham had acquired influence in the reconstituted Canal Commission. Early in June the blow fell.
Homeward bound, of a Tuesday, Horace had accepted a tow for the last five miles from the lordly packet-boat, Chief Engineer. As they approached the upper lock, Jim Cronkhite descended to the berm, hailing the captain.
“Hey! I can’t lock you through.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Orders.”
“Orders out against the Chief Engineer?” said the stupefied navigator.
“I can lock the Chief Engineer,” said Cronkhite, “but I can’t take your tow.”
Captain Ingram struck an attitude worthy of Nelson at Trafalgar.
“You can’t take my tow! You can’t take the Chief Engineer’s tow! Why, you shrimp! You mudchick! You stinkfish! Do you know who the hell you’re talkin’ to? I’m the Erie Canal Navigation Line.”
Horace cast off and slewed in to the berm. “What’s this, Jim?” he asked quietly.
“Commission’s instructions, Doc. Sorry.”
“What are the instructions?”
“You and your boat are henceforth barred and proscribed from all waters, banks and locks appertainin’ to the Erie Canal. Papers just come in. Want to see ’em?”
“Stick your damn papers up your pants-leg,” roared Captain Ingram, tempering his language to the attentive ears of the passengers on his deck. “Swing out your tackles,” he snapped to the crew.
They sprang to the work. The ropes were affixed and the batteau snugged smartly inboard.
“Now, you puddlepup! Do you refuse to take my freight?”
Cronkhite hurried back and bent to his handlebars. Horace and his batteau were freighted home on what he knew to be their last voyage.
A few weeks earlier so stern a reversal of fortune would have shattered him. Now he had regained the old fighting spirit. His only dismay was over the effect upon Dinty.
“They’re going to be sorry for what they did to you in this town,” she declared when she heard the news. “There’s a lot of sickness.”
“Since when?”
“Since you left on this last trip. It came with the warm spell. Old Murch can’t handle it alone. And that fat pig from Geneva who thought he was going to step into your place, got drunk and mixed his doses and nearly killed a lot of people. So he can’t come till they let him out of jail, and I hope that’s never.”
“I’ll just sniff around after supper,” he said.
His nose told him much. Freed from the nuisance of his officious and impertinent interference, the village had lapsed into its old, typical slovenliness; once again it was foul and contented. Warm aromas rose from drainage, pools and offal piles. Along Main Street manure had been washed into the gutters and shoved into conical heaps which sweated and stank. In sunlight they would be reeking with life. Perhaps with death, as well.
Horace wagged his head ominously. It was none of his affair. He had been officially discharged of all authority and responsibility in the matter. Nevertheless every instinct within him revolted at the peril which he foresaw. He prophesied dire things to Dinty, who tossed her head and said it would serve ’em right.
In the middle of the night, she awoke to the uneasy feeling of being alone. She put out a hand to where the partner of her bed should have been; the hollow in the goosedown mattress was empty though still warm. She hopped out and threw a wrap over her shoulders. Someone was moving in the office below. She went to the stairhead.
“Doc! Horace! Dr. Amlie!”
The door opened. “A call, Dinty.”
“Where?”
“The Pinch.”
“Do you have to go at this hour?”
An urchin whom she recognized as a canal-rat thrust forth his head.
“It’s the twins, ma’am,” he piped. “One’s dead an’ t’other’s twitchin’.”
“You see,” said Horace.
“You’ll be arrested again.”
“They’ll have to jail me, then. I can’t stand by and do nothing.”
Argument against that mood was waste of breath. She ran down, carrying his coat, helped him arrange his medicines, and saw him out into the night, accompanied by the ragamuffin.
It was broad day when he returned. He was haggard. To his wife’s inquiry he shook his head.
“Too late,” he said. “And they’d been sick less than forty-eight hours. There’s a twelve-year-old girl down, too. I think I’ve checked her case.”
“But what is it?”
“Intestinal. Filth and flies. It strikes like cholera.”
“Oh, Doc! It isn’t the cholera!”
“Might almost as well be. Give me a bite of breakfast, Dinty, and I’ll get some sleep. I’m a used-up man.”
So peacefully was he sleeping at noon that she at first refused to rouse him at the urgent instance of Sam’l Drake, whose fifteen-year-old son, Adam, had been stricken.
“Get Dr. Murchison,” she said with a degree of saturnine satisfaction, for the wheelwright was one of those who had testified against Horace.
“He’s sick with it, himself. For the pity of God, Mrs. Amlie!” His voice rattled, high and hysterical in his throat. “My boy looks like dying.”
“Tell him I’m coming,” shouted Horace from above.
He hurried away with the father and was able to check the deadly drain of the dysentery with blackberry brandy and Jamaica Ginger. Two other calls were on the slate when he got back; one from the Eagle, the other a maltster’s apprentice in Vandowzer’s brewery. By nightfall he had attended eleven patients. It was an epidemic. Dinty said, with unaccustomed hardihood, that Palmyra was getting what it deserved and that her Doc was a fool to lay himself liable to further prosecution.
“May as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,” he retorted. “I’m taking no fees. So far, I’m clear.”
“Working yourself to death for nothing!” she returned wrathfully.
The disease spread on wings. Children fell to it quickest and with the least resistance, but no age was exempt. The village fathers, convened in emergency meeting, voted to bring in outside help. But whom?
Private exchange of ideas brought out the fact that most of them wanted Dr. Vought but hesitated to suggest it before Genter Latham. The autocrat, however, made no objection when the subject was timidly broached. Although he lost his case before the commission, the Rochester man had impressed the clearheaded business element of Palmyra with his decisiveness and capacity. An appropriation from village funds was agreed upon. They invited the veteran to make an inspection and advise what was to be done.
Dr. Vought made his inspection mainly with his nose. At least, this was the impression of the special sub-committee which accompanied him on his rounds. He wrinkled his nostrils disgustedly all over their fair village. Chairman Levering offered a half-hearted apology for conditions, allowing that they had grown a little careless, maybe, but smells did not mean much, anyway. The visitor fixed him with a glassy stare.
“Death stinks,” he observed succinctly.
“Do you consider this visitation a miasmatic disease, Doctor?” asked Deacon Dillard.
“Home-grown miasma,” barked the visitor. “What do you folks think God gave you noses for?”
As nobody had a theory to offer, he continued, “To scent danger. If something smells bad, that’s a warning. Even your dog’s nose knows that much.”
“But what is the nature of the disease?” asked Mr. Van Wie anxiously.
“False cholera.”
There was a breath of relief. J. Evernghim thanked God audibly and was transfixed by an eye like a red bead.
“You’ve had deaths, I believe,” said the physician.
“Three thus far.”
“And they’re just as dead as if they’d died of true cholera, ain’t they?”
The fact, being undeniable, was tacitly allowed.
“Then don’t talk like a dithered lunk,” said Dr. Vought.
“Dok-tor Amlie vos alvus pesterin’ us to clean up,” volunteered Simon Vandowzer.
“Ah! Amlie. There’s a man with brains in his head.” Dr. Vought looked about him as if challenging his hearers to produce any other with such desirable equipment. “I shall need his professional aid.”
The escort glanced at one another uneasily.
“Well, what’s the matter now?” snapped the visitor.
“I fear the gentleman is no longer available,” said Mr. Levering. “There are reasons.”
“Such as?”
“Mister Amlie is no longer an M.D. He is prohibited from practicing here.”
“Well, well, well!” said the other, elaborately sardonic. “You tell me that! Hark ye, village fathers of a bastard community, I want Dr. Amlie and I propose to have Dr. Amlie. No Horace Amlie, no John G. Vought. Is that clear?”
It was as clear as silence could make it.
“No dissenting voice? Good! We shall now proceed.”
A messenger was dispatched for Horace and the tour was resumed. As its close the consultant delivered his opinion.
“The type is unmistakable. Not Asiatic cholera. Bad enough, though. You’re going to suffer for your sins, my friends. Fetch me four stout laborers with shovels and picks and we’ll get to work.”
Palymra accepted the cleansing as meekly as an urchin before the Sunday morning washtub. The two physicians worked night and day, aided toward the end by Murchison who had made a good recovery. Within ten days the number of new cases was on the decline; in a month the onset was over, with a total of thirteen deaths, mostly young children. The last case was a dubious one; that of Tim Mynderse, the constable, who washed down a quart of black cherries with ale followed by whisky, went to bed, writhed and died, leaving the office vacant.
In his farewell meeting with the trustees, Dr. Vought addressed to them some admonitions in very unpalatable terms, told them that they were unfaithful curators, and departed with his considerable fee in his pocket. His last call was at the Amlies’ and was signalized by his plunking down upon Horace’s desk the handsome sum of twenty-five dollars, representing a fair half of his emolument. More moved than he cared to show, Horace refused it, whereupon the old gentleman cursed him in seven categories for the seven different kinds of fool he was, went out the front gate and in the back and found Dinty.
“Your husband,” he pronounced, “doesn’t deserve you.”
“He’s the best husband in the world,” said Dinty with conviction.
“He’s the fool of his conscience. I’ll warrant you’re more sensible.”
Dinty dimpled. “Thank you.”
“Well, are you or ain’t you?”
“I don’t know until my conscience has the facts.”
“Twenty-five dollars,” said the old gentleman, and waved the bills before her dazzled vision. He supplemented the action with explicit facts. “What about your conscience now?”
“It’s asleep.”
“Wise child. I thought you’d see it my way.”
“I wouldn’t if I didn’t think Horace had earned it.”
“He’s earned it, and better.” He regarded her intently. What was coming now, Dinty wondered.
“Watch that Horace of yours, my dear.”
“You think he’s liable to do something foolish?” asked she, astute and alarmed.
“I’m afraid of it. He’s in a dangerous frame of mind.”
“Who wouldn’t be!” said the wife, her eyes snapping. “They’ve turned him out of his profession.”
“He’s got the gristle to stand up to that, because he knows he’s in the right. It’s the Latham affair.”
“I know,” said she miserably. “He talks of it in his sleep.”
“Therein he’s afraid he’s wrong,” pursued the mentor. “That’s rank poison to a man of his temper. He’s a mind possessed, Dinty.”
“Sometimes it scares me,” she admitted.
“What? You don’t look easy to scare.”
“The fear that maybe he is wrong. Dr. Vought, is he right or wrong?”
“Damned if I can figure. But he mustn’t do anything without consulting me.”
“What kind of thing?”
“How can you tell, with a man like him? Kidnap the girl, maybe, to make an examination for himself. He’s surely brooding something. I wish he could ease his brain of it.”
“So do I,” said the wife fervently.
He scrutinized her concerned face. “What else have you got on that restless mind of yours, child?”
For reply she got the Eclectic from Horace’s office and presented it, opened to the significant page.
Dr. Vought read, snorting as his brisk mind assimilated the purport. “Well? What of it? What’s the relevancy?” he demanded.
“I want to know if it’s true. It’s very important for me to know.”
The little physician stared. “What! You don’t mean to tell me that Horace …”
“No!” she blazed. “How dare you think such a thing, you—you wicked-minded old man!”
“Hoity-toity! I’m a medical practitioner. Don’t try to bullyrag me, young lady. What’s your concern with this? Out with it.”
“I can’t tell you. Is it true or not?”
“Passel of damned lies backed up with fraud. This man, Dorpener”—he tapped the paper with a horny finger—“writes himself down an ignoramus, a quack and an impostor. Why, he isn’t even an M.D. Everything in his silly article has been blown to bits by better men with fuller data. Still,” he added with an attempt at justice, “a-plenty of sound medical men believed his trumped-up figures. Your Horace ain’t any worse than a lot of better men.”
Dinty received this extraordinary statement with disfavor. “There aren’t any better men,” she averred stoutly. “Good-bye, and thank you, dear Dr. Vought. And I’m sorry for what I said about your mind being wicked. Would you mind not telling Horace about his mistake? Not yet, anyway.”
She secreted the twenty-five-dollar honorarium (as she chose to consider it) in a place more private than the pickle-jar. It was to be their final recourse in the thin times which she saw in prospect.
Politics fermented beneath Palmyra’s placid surface. There were private convocations at Simon Bewar’s smithy, conferences among the elite of the ninepin alley, strategies in the inner circle of the Horse Thief Society. Shortly before the special election for the office of constable, Tom Daw, with a healthy bribe in his pocket, manned the foot-treadle Ramage press of Messrs. Grandin & Tucker under cover of night, and ran off a batch of broadsides and ballots. Thus set in motion, the campaign gathered too much headway for the Latham-Levering-Vandowzer faction to head it off.
Horace Amlie, ex-M.D., was elected town constable by the notable plurality of fifty-seven votes. That meant a dollar a day for the tenure. It was not luxury, but it was a living.