The Place Called Dagon

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