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
