Canal Town Read online

  A young lady, making the turn from the inn corner, craned her graceful head, affording Horace Amlie an advantageous sight of a delicate, serious face of pure contours, from which dove-gray eyes looked out in shy appraisal. Silverhorn assumed a rakish pose.

  “A bene mort,” he commented, caressing a side whisker.

  “None of your gyppo lingo for the likes of Miss Agatha Levering,” the tavern keeper rebuked him.

  “The Leverings of the asheries,” Silverhorn was obliging enough to explain for the stranger’s enlightenment. “They hold their chins high.”

  “And why not?” said Mr. St. John.

  “True for you,” conceded the canal man. “They’re crumey with bank-rags. But does that righten her to look down her pretty nose at a man that’s had better than her and left ’em when done with ’em?”

  Horace was both amused and disgusted. Evidently this young sprig had flaunted his manly charms in vain before the gray-eyed beauty. The canaller expertly twirled his bugle on his thumb, restored it to the buckle on his belt and swaggered to the door, bidding Horace farewell with an airy flirt of the hand.

  “We’ll meet again, young Æsculapius.”

  “Who is he?” Horace inquired of the host.

  “A rouncher. A real rouncher. His family were well thought of, down Jerusalem way. He’s the black sheep. Had his turn at smuggling on the lakes. If you can believe the talk, he was with the New York mob that operated a bogus two years ago; I’ve been nicked with the false money of their coinage and be damned to it. Nothing proved on him, though. He’s slick as a mink. Since then he’s swung his tiller on two canals, and now he’s for this one. Very much the gentleman when he chooses. It’s good blood with a bad turn to it. Are you for a stroll of inspection, sir?”

  Dr. Amlie looked ruefully down at his feet. “I shall have to get my gear mended first, or go barefoot as an urchin.”

  “Nothing easier. Decker Jessup is your man. At the Sign of the Red Boot.”

  The village had not yet waked to business as the physician walked down the street, but the door beneath the swaying emblem was open. Within, a pale, corpulent man sat wheezing at his bench, which was fitted with neat shelves for his awls, punches and hammers, a shallow leathern pouch for remnants, stretchers for the strips of hides and, over all, a palanquin-like roof.

  “You work early,” remarked the caller.

  The cobbler peered nearsightedly at him. “When fools are still abed, the world is to the wise,” he croaked. “What’s your will?”

  The doctor pointed to his boots. “Can you repair these?”

  “Stand steady.” Decker Jessup picked one foot from the floor as if it were a horse’s hoof, set it down and repeated the process with the other. “You go shod like a mincing miss,” he pronounced. “Nothing to be done here.”

  The young man was annoyed. “What kind of craftsman are you that cannot mend sound leather?” he demanded sharply.

  “A very good craftsman. An excellent craftsman. But not in such a matter. Your gear is better fitten for a ball-floor than for road service. Delicate leather, but not worth the cost of repairs. Cast ’em to the rats and let me make you a serviceable pair.”

  “By declining to mend my shoes you hope to better me in a trade, I presume.”

  “I better no man. Value given is my rule. Will you be shod with the true preparation? One dollar.”

  The visitor regarded his feet uncertainly. “I should like to save these. Waste I cannot afford. Few things are beyond repair.”

  “You tell me that, who are a learned doctor?”

  “How do you know that?”

  The cobbler’s round shoulders shook with self-satisfied mirth. “When you turned, a blind man could see the Latin print on the certificate perking from your pocket. Come, young man, let me turn you out a pair of boots, factored from the true preparation, such as will do honor to your feet. Ready by sundown. A dollar will nor make nor break you, to judge from your fine clothes.”

  “Will you take it out in trade?”

  “What! Physicking? I don’t hold with doctors. I medicate out of the Masonic Almanach and save the costs.”

  “You look it,” retorted the customer. “You’ve bile in your eye to be scraped with a knife. Your skin is yellow as cowslip and the cat could borrow your tongue for a tail.”

  “Hoity-toity and hale-you-to-jail!” said the astonished cobbler. “What cockerel have we here? I’ve done well enough for forty year without your opinion.”

  “What’s that at the turn of your jaw?”

  The craftsman fingered the protuberance with tenderness. “What would you say of it?”

  “Cynanche parotidea. Or perhaps caries dentium.”

  “English will do for my jaw. It’s no more than an overgrown tooth.”

  “As I said. Let me examine.”

  Hypnotized by the other’s masterful touch, Cobbler Jessup permitted his head to be tilted back and his eyes covered with his own neckerchief.

  “Open,” said the young man in an authoritative tone. “Wider. Ah!”

  “Ow!” yelled the patient.

  Having lifted from their appointed place the cobbler’s own pincers, Dr. Amlie had tweaked forth the tooth in one powerful jerk.

  “There!” said he. “Didn’t hurt, did it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll sleep the better for it this night. Wash out your oral cavity with whisky. Extractio dentis, one shilling.”

  “You charge high for a small matter,” grumbled the other, caressing his jaw.

  “Skill and education are worth their price,” returned the sententious physician. “Deduct it from the cost of my boots.”

  The patient grinned. “You will go far, young man.”

  Dr. Amlie looked out upon the street, now burgeoning into activity. “Perhaps no farther than this,” he murmured.

  “Are you opening a consultation room?”

  “I must make a start somewhere. Why not here?”

  “I know the very spot for you,” declared the cobbler. “Genteel lodgings at a fair, living price. A most respectable lady. I should know, she being my widowed sister. Let me conduct you there.”

  Putting aside his leathern apron, he led the way around the corner of Canandaigua Road to a small, pleasant dwelling. Mrs. Martha Harte presented a lugubrious countenance, a clammy hand, and an air of discouraged patience, but admitted to having a ground floor which she might be willing to rent.

  “Ten shillings the week, and I’ll victual you well, though I’d prob’ly lose money on it,” she said with a snivel.

  Dr. Amlie privately thought this prophecy unlikely. The house was roomy and well-placed, the chamber stoutly furnished, if a bit musty, and the price little more than he had intended to pay.

  “I am obligated to the Eagle House for a week,” he explained. “After that I will advise you of my decision.”

  Bidding them good morning he turned back into Main Street. To the casual eye he would have appeared a young gentleman out for a pleasurable stroll while smoking his after-breakfast segar. But the eyes beneath the fashionably curved hat-brim were alert and observant; the brain back of them busy with estimate and appraisal.

  The clock in the window of J. Evernghim stood at eight. The street was already astir. Downwind was borne a spicy tang, new to the nostrils of the outlander. He doubtfully identified it as spearmint, though he did not locate the prosperous still which produced the principal supply of the tincture to the candy, the medical and the perfume trade of the nation. A sharper, more acrid odor exuded from the tannery on the creek bank, and with it mingled the sour, sturdy aroma of the two asheries which faced one another across the stream, and the festive breath of mash, fermenting to whisky in the corner distillery. Along the waterfront sawmills buzzed, gristmills clacked, and fulling-mills clattered in choral contribution to the happy clamor of prosperity.

  The stranger paused beside a vacant lot giving a long view down Mud Creek, that legally established traffic-way
between Macedon to the westward and on to Lyons in the other direction. A barge toiled against the sluggish current, laden with cord from the ropewalk two miles downstream, product of the local hemp-fields which commanded their price of more than two hundred dollars per ton in any market. Two lean Indians were paddling a canoe, across which was balanced a fine buck, ready for dressing into venison. Back of them, and slower of pace, two batteaus moved to the impulsion of oars; the men sweating at the task, while the womenfolk, gay with finery, anticipated a day of shopping in the superior emporia of Palmyra.

  Already the windows were setting forth the temptation of their wares; the Cheap Store exhibiting its bonnets, shawls and bright kerchiefs from Albany and New York; the provision shops their viands both dry and wet; the smithy, ringing out its metallic music; the tailoring establishment flaunting its dandy apparel for man and boy; Drake’s Wagon & Sleigh place its equipages; strong and graceful furniture by Bezabeel Fornum, the cabinet factor; ironmongery for all uses and to every taste; the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker all smiling a welcome to the early trade.

  As young Dr. Amlie stood in interested contemplation, a bent and crabbed dyspeptic emerged from a doorway, bearing an ornate sign under his arm and dragging a chair in his other hand. Stepping upon the seat, he carefully swung his board to two wrought-iron hooks, thus proclaiming to the world that O. Daggett, gilder, painter and sign-factor was ready for business. The young physician cast a desirous eye on the splendor above him. He hesitated in balance between his ambition for a similarly alluring professional announcement and his consciousness of depleted funds. A squat, brisk fellow was chaffering with O. Daggett.

  “How much for a sign, this style?”

  “How many words?”

  The customer counted them on his fingers as he enunciated jerkily:

  “T. Lay—Buys Everything—Fair Dealing to One and All—Highest Prices—Custom Solicited. Thirteen words.”

  O. Daggett occupied himself with his own fingers. “I make it fourteen.”

  “You wouldn’t charge a man two words for a name as short as mine, would you?” protested Mr. Lay, aggrieved.

  “Make it three dollars.”

  “Three dollars is a power of money.”

  “Take paint and I’ll do it for two. This is the costliest gilt in the market.”

  “It shines like gold. I like it. Three dollars, then. Barter?”

  “Cash from you, Trumbull Lay.”

  “I got no three dollars cash. Where would I find three dollars cash? There’s little money going in this town. Take whisky.”

  “Don’t drink.”

  “Twist?”

  “Don’t chaw.”

  “Black-salt?”

  “Don’t shoot. Got no gun.”

  “Fresh meat and vegetables daily for your table then,” appealed the other.

  “Got no digestion, neither. Bring me cash or good bills or save your breath and my time.” O. Daggett turned to survey the stranger. “Anything in your line, young sir?”

  Dr. Amlie returned a regretful negative, and resumed his stroll. Before spending he must begin to earn. An elderly black man limped toward him, smiling and knuckling at his sparse white forecurl.

  “Give a po’ slave a shillin’, Your Honah.”

  “Whose slave were you?”

  “Massa Helms’s, on Great Sodus. He daid, praise God. A hahd man. Give old Unk Zeb a shillin’, sah. Zeb’s hungry.”

  “No. I won’t give you money. But if you come to the Eagle late this afternoon, I’ll treat your eyes.” The ex-slave’s vision was blurred with trachoma.

  The Negro bobbed in gratitude and hobbled on. From an open window a reedy and pious refrain came to the ears of the wayfarer. A hunchback was operating a lap-organ with busily pumping elbow, while he hummed the refrain of “Bramcoate” in rehearsal for the morrow’s service. Facing him a woman wove a fine straw hat with delicate and careful art.

  “Plat you a hat, young gentleman?” she asked, seeing him pause.

  Everyone in town, it appeared, was after his or some other person’s trade. He liked that. It betokened an alert and active community. Presently he would have something to sell to it.

  “How long does it take you to finish a hat like that?” he asked, admiring the handiwork.

  “Nine days. I sell for six dollars and find and cure my own straw.” She sighed. “I make out to gain our living while he”—she nodded indulgently toward the musician—“pumps his little wheezer and lines out the hymns.”

  A stern-looking personage in black stopped before the place. “See to it that you keep truer measure than last Sunday,” he admonished the hunchback.

  “The Reverend Theron Strang,” said the woman respectfully, as he left. “A kind man until the dyspepsy takes him. Then he’s a powerful hell-fire exhorter and death on backsliders. Weekdays he conducts the Register newspaper, where you see him climbing yonder stairs.”

  “And I’m his devil,” put in the hunchback. “Tom Daw, the parson’s devil.”

  The rattle-and-plunk of a handpress gave evidence that the reverend gentleman was his own printer. A specimen of his job-work made appeal to the eye in an adjacent window.

  EPHRAIM UPCRAFT

  the

  Honest Lawyer.

  Uncurrent Notes Bought.

  The explorer winced. In his weaselskin reposed sundry paper of the Ontario Bank which was decidedly uncurrent, that institution being in a state of coma if not actually defunct. Elder Amlie of Utica, the young man’s uncle, had offered him twenty-five percent of what he could realize on the $150 face value of the notes. Without some return from them, his immediate outlook was skimpy.

  Where two churches marked the end of the business section, as it abruptly thinned out into stump-studded fields and heavy copses, he crossed over to retrace his journey of inspection on the opposite side. The farther he went, the more was he impressed by the number and quality of the establishments. He passed a timberyard, a store displaying splitwood chairs and baskets, a maltster’s location, a second inn, the Exchange, rather dingy, and a barber shop, “At the Sign of the Streaked Pole; L. Brooks, M.D.” The duly certified practitioner indulged in a private sneer. What sort of M.D. would debase himself from the forceps and lancet to the shears and razor?

  The enunciation of his name, in this town where he was unknown, startled him. It was only Decker Jessup summoning him from the door across the thoroughfare.

  “I’ve something to show you,” said the cobbler as his new acquaintance approached. “Keep your eye on that door.”

  The indicated spot was the side exit of the Eagle. Presently there appeared a sleek, tall figure, glossy-hatted and heavy-bearded, dandling a silverheaded cane.

  “Our medical faculty,” said the cobbler. “Dr. Gail Murchison.”

  “He makes his visits early.”

  “He takes his dram early. He’ll have another at eleven.”

  “I should like to meet him.”

  “Nothing easier.” As the doctor came near, with a slow and dignified pace, the cobbler accosted him. “Dr. Murchison, good morning, sir.”

  “Ah! The worthy Jessup. Good morning, good morning.”

  “Make you acquainted with Dr. Horace Amlie, late of Oneida County.”

  “Doctor? Did you say doctor? You profess medicine, sir?”

  “As a tyro, only,” replied the newcomer modestly.

  The older man peered out from beneath lowering brows. “Ah, so! You’re not thinking to settle here, are you?”

  “My plans are not yet matured,” Horace evaded.

  Dr. Murchison waved a hand, every nail of which was outlined in sable. “A cruel, healthy place,” he bumbled. “And penny-pinching—oh, my soul! Our health is notorious. A practitioner finds little to do, and for that little is paid in thanks. Had you thought of Rochesterville?”

  “I have visited there.”

  “A fine, feverous town,” said Dr. Murchison with enthusiasm. “No better opening for an am
bitious young medical man.”

  Decker Jessup coughed, gazing with intent upon the well-rounded belly that distended the flowery beaverteen of the speaker’s waistcoat.

  “Yes, yes, a starvation calling,” sighed the other. He brightened. “But we serve a purpose, sir. The dignity of the profession.”

  An exploring bee, thinking favorably of the Murchison breath, became entangled in the luxuriant whiskers. The doctor clawed angrily at it.

  “Damn that young Crego!” he spluttered. “His pests should be banished the town.”

  Two little girls, tripping along the sidepath, stopped and viewed his antics with mirth.

  “Giggling goslings!” he muttered under his breath. “Oh, ’tis you, my dear Wealthia. And our little Araminta. Two of my young patients,” he explained to Dr. Amlie.

  Having exorcised the bee, he bowed to the alien and passed on. The children lingered, listening to the music of Tom Daw’s lap-organ, now dispensing a lay which never derived from the hymnbook. The taller of the pair, who looked to be on the verge of womanhood, swayed her lithe body and moved on frisky feet. Her companion, a couple of years younger, lifted an impertinently cocked nose between two large and very blue eyes, and shook her strawy pigtail back over her shoulder.

  “That’s a dicty pretty tune,” she said in lilting tones, and essayed to follow it.

  The cobbler gave them good morning, to which they responded civilly. They clasped hands and danced on along the walk.

  “Now, if you could get their custom away from Old Murch,” said the cobbler, “you’d have a start.”

  “Who are they?” asked Dr. Amlie without special interest.

  “The older one, with the comether in those brown eyes of hers—though she might not know it yet—she’s the only child of Genter Latham. T’other one’s an imp of Satan. She’s from the stone mansion on the slope, the Jerrold place. Fine gentry, too, though not as rich and solid as Genter Latham. A neat penny Old Murch makes from the two houses. All our prosperous folks doctor with him.”

  “And the poor? Where do they doctor?”

  “Not with Dr. M., to be sure. What would he gain from them?”

  “Experience.”

  The other chuckled. “Not his line. If you’re seeking experience, you’ll find a free field here.”