Not on speaking terms

GEORGE MILBURN

Old Doctor Rittenhouse and his wife lived under the same roof for thirty years without speaking to each other. Their house was the big white one on the southern edge of town. It was built with wooden turrets and leaded glass windows in the fashion of the '90's. It had a broad lawn with an iron picket fence all around and a cast iron nigger boy for a hitching post at the front gate.

Dr. Rittenhouse had built the big home when he first came out to the territory to establish his practice. Then he went back to Ohio and married his sweetheart and brought her along.

The story went that they had been living in the new house about a year when, one morning at breakfast, they had words about the way the coffee was boiled.

"I hope I won't have to speak about it again," said Dr. Rittenhouse to let his wife know that the argument was at an end.

Mrs. Rittenhouse was angry, so she picked up her cup and let the doctor have the lukewarm coffee, straight in his face.

Dr. Rittenhouse took his napkin and began wiping the grounds out of his eyes. "I hope I won't have to speak about it again," he had said, and those were the last words that ever passed between the two. From then on until death parted them they lived in opposite parts of the big white house, and neither spoke to acknowledge the other's existence.

Mrs. Rittenhouse was a woman with the grand manner. She drove a phaeton hitched to a team of pacing geldings around town. Daily she would drive up in front of the postoffice and hail some passing youngster. "Laddie, run in and get my mail," she would command. And usually the small boy would be too surprised to do anything but comply. Mrs. Rittenhouse bore herself proudly, and she said nothing that would contribute to the gossip about the strange life that she and the doctor led.

H She was a woman who expected her commands to be obeyed, and she was so domineering, she had a hard time keeping a servant. The niggers came and went at the Rittenhouse place. They were the ones who kept the rumors afloat. A nigger girl who had worked in the Rittenhouse kitchen told her next employer, "You can just feel the hate in -that house. Some of it come from old doctor, but most of it come from his wife. Just pure old hate thicknin' the air. I sho' doan like a place where all that hatin' is goin' on." Old Dr. Rittenhouse, in later years, inherited property back in Ohio that gave him an independent income. He began deliberately to neglect and discourage his practice.

Continued on page 92

Continued from page 67

Once Bob Pearson, who was new in town, went on a coyote hunt with some of the boys. He got jostled out of the wagon he was riding in and fell on his head. As soon as he got back to town he went up to Dr. Rittenhouse.

"Doc," he said, "I've got something tore loose inside me."

"Well, I'll tell you what you do," Dr. Rittenhouse said in a mock-sympathetic tone, "you go get you a bottle of glue and drink it and see if that doesn't fix you up."

One Sunday evening Dr. Rittenhouse came into the Economy Drug Store and called Bill Hartshorne, the prescription clerk, over to one side. "Bill," he said, "I want the prettiest box of chocolates you've got in the house. Tomorrow is my thirty-first wedding anniversary, and I been thinking about it lately, and I've decided that it was about time my old Woman and I got back on speaking terms again."

A little before noon the next day, Earl Abernathy, the mortician, got a frantic telephone call from the nigger cook at the Rittenhouse place. He got into his convertible ambulancehearse and hurried out there. The nigger cook let him in at a side door and took him into a bedroom where Mrs. Rittenhouse Avas lying propped up on some pilloAvs, her face pale and drawn. There was a half-empty box of chocolates on the table beside the bed.

Earl Abernathy gasped.

Mrs. Rittenhouse began speaking in a faint voice, "You were called to get the doctor's body," she said. "You'll find it over there in his bedroom on the other side of the house."

Earl Abernathy said, "Mrs. Rittenhouse ain't you sick too?"

Mrs. Rittenhouse said, "Yes, I'm poisoned. Dr. Rittenhouse gave me this box of poisoned chocolates this morning. It was just a case of Avhich one got the other one first, so I slipped strychnine in the sugar for his coffee this morning."

Earl Abernathy said, "Well, you better let me rush you to a hospital."

"No, leave me alone to die," said Mrs. Rittenhouse, "and go attend to the doctor's body. You'll need the hearse for it."

They buried old Dr. Rittenhouse the next day. Mrs. Rittenhouse got all right after the funeral. Analysis of the chocolates failed to reveal any trace of poison. There was talk of prosecuting her, but that Avas dropped. She Avas a white-haired old woman and she had such a grand manner.