III

III

The girl’s eyes were like wet violets, a soaked blue so deep as to be astonishing. Mrs. Slater had said: “Deborah.⁠ ⁠… This is Doctor Dreeme⁠ ⁠…” and then she had added in a grudging tone: “My niece⁠ ⁠… Deborah is my niece⁠ ⁠…” Dreeme remembered that he had bowed and mumbled vaguely in his throat. It did not surprise him that Mrs. Slater had a niece. She looked as though she had nieces. Besides, all New Englanders had nieces. It was the penalty of the country. That⁠ ⁠… or⁠ ⁠… well, perhaps, no nieces. It was all a question of family, of children, of course. Grandfathers were at a premium in New England now but nieces and nephews and cousins were the common coinage of pride. It was impossible to go into a musty Back Bay parlor, for instance, without hearing something about: “He’s a cousin of⁠ ⁠…” or “She’s the niece of.⁠ ⁠…” It was like that. Being reduced to mop up one’s lesser relatives, so to speak. Or to reach out through a dubious cousinal (could there be such a word?) connection and so getting a foot in. Families scattered and broke up; the main stem shattered; there was nothing but twigs left. “I am a twig of the Winthrops.” A windblown twig without any leaves. Mrs. Slater scraped his chair back and he sank into it. She was staring at him with fluttering eyes. There were snapping eyes all around the table. He was getting choppy in his thoughts. Choppy⁠ ⁠… choppy.

He assumed a bland indifference and waited for the smoking bowl of cabbage to be pushed his way. The long red slices of corned beef lay like so many tongues at his elbow. He forked one neatly and slapped it onto his plate.

Physiognomy, they said, was a science in itself. The twist of a man’s mind from the twist of his mouth. His slant from the slant of his nose. But what about a man with a cloven head? What about a woman with⁠ ⁠… oh, wonderful! The cabbage, a pale browny-green glistening with tiny jewels of grease, reached him and he speared an efficient mound of it. A long walk induced hunger. Take faces now. The sly student ran his eyes over a face and solved it as easily as a rebus is solved, a rebus put together for infantile intellects. One assumed that the student was right but one did not really know. Still⁠ ⁠… there must be a lot in it. If the proper perspective was achieved the face fell into an approximate map of the mind. Easy. Like pulling a rabbit out of a silk hat. But you had to catch your rabbit first. Dreeme put his knife and fork down softly. He was lightheaded. Giddy. Too much sun. But if he was going to get anywhere he would have to study faces, covertly, tracking out half-obliterated urges, deciphering.⁠ ⁠… Mrs. Slater asked him if he would like some vinegar on his cabbage. Good God, no! “Thank you,” he said and shook his head. He picked up the fork and thrust it into his smoking mound of cabbage. The little jewels of grease dripped from the raised portion. He gazed about him, stifling an intensity of stare behind an assumed nonchalance.

He was surrounded by masticating jaws. Walden Slater, the Reverend George Burroughs, five little Slaters with pop eyes and glistening chins down which cabbage grease ran. And⁠ ⁠… that girl. Mrs. Slater, having placed everything on the table, sank with a sigh of relief into her seat. Her eyes fluttered as one brown, freckled hand reached for the corned beef platter. She, at least, was patent. Her plumpness bulged at the caught-in house-wrapper. Her face was a small moon with a turned-up nose, a wide mouth that inclined downwards at the corners, and round eyes that thrust forward from the puffed circles that contained them. Her wispy straw-colored hair was drawn back in a sort of doorknob and the heads of three metal hairpins stood up from it like tiny croquet arches. She was an aunt, after all. It was quite reasonable. Opposite her Walden Slater’s long upper lip snapped feverishly at a dangling bit of cabbage. The lip of a camel. The cockscomb of hair stood upright on his head and the thousand and one wrinkles in his red weather-beaten neck rippled as he leaned forward over his plate. The tuft of ragged hair beneath his lower lip glistened with cabbage grease. There were marks of perspiration about the armpits of his blue denim shirt. His broken nails carried a fair share of the dark soil of Marlborough. Now and then he would raise his watery gray eyes and look swiftly about the table. The heavy brows above them, bristling with a nondescript brush of hair, rose and fell as his long jaw moved up and down. Jabbing his fork into a long tongue of corned beef he tossed it dexterously upward and caught it with a lip that seemed, rubber-like, to stretch down to meet it. It was a triumph of coordination and Dreeme watched it with a pleased and sleepy satisfaction. Now if he could catch corned beef like that⁠ ⁠… on the wing, so to speak.⁠ ⁠… The five little Slaters cracked their iron-shod heels against the legs of their chairs as they dribbled food. Give them time. They would grow as dexterous as Walden. They were a regimented quintet. They rushed out to school with a great clattering of feet and rushed back again to dinner with the same infernal racket. Their immature minds were small muddy circles into which the schoolmaster flung flawed pearls. The jewels sank to the bottom and were seen no more.

Dreeme’s mind revolved, for an instant, about educational processes. Tomorrow this community of Marlborough would be changed. It would be renewed by the five little Slaters and their companions in age. What would they make of the valley and the dour town? Would things remain the same? Would that persistent shadow of mystery that hovered over the place be lifted or would its darkness, like the impalpable darkness of invisible wings, deepen and remain? Who could prophesy what would be the state of affairs at that not-so-distant time? There was no reason why the outer world should impinge too strongly on Marlborough, for, after all, the valley was a cul-de-sac, a cache into which the Past had thrust an untidy bundle of urges and traditions and left them there to rot in the sunlight. And Dreeme seemed to see the Marlborough of the future stretching out like a corpse in the bright sunlight of the valley and striving⁠ ⁠… striving.⁠ ⁠… He shuddered at the picture so suddenly brought up before his mind, a picture of a white leprous mass struggling to live, dead and yet never dying, with closed eyes that continually quivered, with blue lips rolling back over yellow decayed teeth, with long skeleton fingers opening and shutting and fighting against the rigor mortis of Time. He slowly put down the.⁠ ⁠…

“If you please!”

The Reverend George Burroughs’ sallow face was thrust appealingly at him and the mechanical portion of Dreeme’s brain slowly grasped the request.

“Cabbage? What cabbage? Oh, yes,” he said hurriedly and pushed the decimated platter of curdling grease along the table.

Mr. Burroughs, his face drawn into a severe and disapproving recognition of woolgathering in general, accepted the glistening remnants with some degree of asperity. Like a little horse. Like a little yellow withered horse. Mr. Burroughs certainly had an equine appearance. Dreeme permitted his eyes to survey the preacher with a faint degree of curiosity. Though he had sat at the same table with him for two years he had never developed enough curiosity about the skinny man of God to observe him closely. Now he would do it. He would fix him in his mind as a butterfly is fixed in a box. He would thrust the sharp pin of his comprehension through the withered thorax of the Reverend George Burroughs. The preacher dropped his face and successfully eluded his silent inquisitor. Dreeme almost called out, “Hey, there!” The preacher’s bald forehead bent above his second helping of cabbage. Dark hair, starting from the ridge of that high forehead grew downward and lost itself in the musty black coat that huddled over the dingy collar. The man’s skin was as sallow as a Chinaman with the jaundice. Though partially concealed by the amusing foreshortening attendant to a lowered head Dreeme could see a fairly long face with high cheekbones, eyes set far apart, and a good-sized mouth. “He will raise his head and neigh at me in a minute,” thought Dreeme. The preacher did raise his head but he did not neigh. Instead of that he looked fixedly at the young doctor for an instant with horribly still eyes and then transferred his attention to his cabbage. For no reason at all Dreeme was embarrassed at this expressionless study and he hastily diverted his eyes elsewhere.

The girl’s eyes were like wet violets, a soaked blue so deep as to be astonishing.

Mrs. Slater had said.⁠ ⁠… Why yes, she was a niece.⁠ ⁠… A New England niece. Now that was funny for she did not look like a niece at all. Nieces were⁠ ⁠… oh, nieces! She was a slender pliant wisp in a matter-of-fact gray dress and with a tiny white collar and cuffs. She ate daintily, nibbling at the bits of corned beef which she raised on the tip of a fork held in the smallest hand for an adult that Dreeme had ever seen. Her absurdly miniature mouth was slightly pursed as though an infant bee had stung it, the smallest of stings, so to speak. Her hair was a bright soft bronze, the sort of hair that⁠ ⁠… well, thought Dreeme, it probably feels like warm mist. Now that he was fairly looking at her he could see how porcelain-like she was, how small in bones and fastidious in gestures. Such a niece for Mrs. Slater! It was almost impossible and Dreeme’s glance flitted swiftly over the five children kicking their heels and gulping their food and Walden Slater conducting a successful foray against a chunk of corned beef that had desperately striven to elude his remorseless fork. The young doctor’s eyes returned to the girl. Deborah. Her name was Deborah. Mrs. Slater had said.⁠ ⁠… The girl looked up and caught Dreeme’s glance with a bright flash of her absurdly blue eyes. The smallest hint of a smile touched her pursed lips and she turned back to her food. Dreeme suddenly felt quite elated. It was not that he cared. He was not a lady’s man in any sense of the word. Just a hardworking doctor who, at this moment, was neglecting his work because of certain silly obsessions that were driving him to distraction, obsessions that Humphrey Lathrop would have to clear away. He would see Humphrey that afternoon, drop in late and smoke a pipe with him, perhaps. Anyway.⁠ ⁠… Deborah looked up again. Her eyes seemed to say, “We have a joke together, haven’t we? Niece? How absurd!” Dreeme pushed his plate back and waited for somebody to speak.

Nobody did. Marlborough meals were like this. A greedy silence lowered over the table.

Walden Slater, overcoming the resistance of the last bit of corned beef on his plate, rose awkwardly to his feet, scraped once or twice, belched forth a triumphant elegy of wind over the meal, and turned toward the door. He shambled out, long arms dangling. His exit was a signal for a general clattering of chairs. The five children avalanched toward the front yard for their fifteen minutes of surly play before the warning bell of the little one-room schoolhouse across the way made them still surlier. Mr. Burroughs walked softly to the window and stood there humming “Rock of Ages.” He was atrociously out of key, a droning whine that clung tenaciously to one note. His still eyes wandered absently toward Deborah as he lulled his dinner to sleep. Dreeme said:

“So you’re Mrs. Slater’s niece?”

The girl looked up brightly.

“Her poor relation,” she replied. “She is very kind to me. Since father died she.⁠ ⁠…”

“You might bring out some dishes,” broke in Mrs. Slater vigorously.

She was a small girl and she carried the stack of greasy plates with an instinctive grace that pleased Dreeme. When she came back she renewed her bright attention toward the young doctor.

“We lived in Leeminster, you know,” she said.

Dreeme did not know but he nodded understandingly.

“Perhaps you read about father,” went on the girl, as she piled saucers in a high heap. “It was in the county paper. The bag of cement fell on him, you know.”

“Of course,” said Dreeme politely.

“The Lord gives and the Lord takes,” insinuated the neighing voice of Mr. Burroughs, who broke off his humming for this shaft of divine wisdom and then instantly resumed it.

“He died in half an hour,” added the girl.

“Really?” exclaimed Dreeme.

He watched her go out with interested eyes. Mr. Burroughs’ humming got on his nerves and he writhed uneasily at the dreary drone. The preacher was like an old bumble bee with bronchitis. He stood in the window, his large mouth pursed, his horsey forehead slightly lowered, and intimated sadly that the Rock had been cleft especially for him. In the flattest of whines he announced his burning desire to fly to Its bosom. “May it fall upon you and crush you!” thought Dreeme somewhat vindictively, the unending whine scraping along his nerves. He waited, in some expectancy, for the reappearance of the girl. But it was not she who came through the door and gathered up the remaining debris of the meal. It was Mrs. Slater, a Mrs. Slater with fluttering eyes and quick lumbering movements. Dreeme felt like smiling but instead of giving way to any such impulse he rose to his feet and sauntered toward the door. A lugubrious whine followed him, creeping up his back and gently pushing him toward the hot early afternoon sunlight. At the lintel he paused and looked back. A musty expanse of black coat and an oblong of black hair. Behind it a shapeless hum that drearily mangled a helpless hymn. A dumpy woman folding a red and white checked tablecloth. She was expressionless now. A big clock ticking. Also expressionless. A waterfall design in pink wallpaper. Curved pink water falling indecently into black baseboards. Scattered chairs to be placed discreetly against the wall until supper. They stood about dejectedly, awaiting the touch of a hand⁠ ⁠… what was it? He stepped through the hall and into the street. The heat was oppressive. It rose at him on scarlet haunches and panted against his face. He stood looking up and down the thoroughfare at nothing before he returned to his next-door office in the little cottage. At nothing. Absolutely nothing. That was it. That was where he stood. That was where they put him. A niece, eh? Well, why not? Mrs. Slater probably had a dozen nephews and nieces living within a radius of ten miles and the fact that he had seen none of them in two years really meant nothing. Mrs. Slater was like that. Marlborough was like that. She didn’t want the girl to grow too friendly with him. To tell him things. Not even obvious things. Ridiculous. He would ply the girl with questions at suppertime and shock, astound, disconcert, and upset the whole table. Well.⁠ ⁠… He stood smiling at his own thoughts. Let them, then.⁠ ⁠… Now what did that mean? He was growing reckless as well as nervously excitable. It was time to see Humphrey Lathrop. Decidedly, Marlborough was getting.⁠ ⁠… He progressed slowly to his own door and placed a hand upon the polished knob.