Dreeme’s lean face grew solemn as he hitched his chair closer to the little table and extended his hand, palm upward, toward Lathrop.
“That may be true enough,” he said. “But the sensation I experience in Marlborough is different. Every community has its own strange aura rising from it. Even the veriest overnight town thrown together beside oil-wells or goldmines speaks in what you might call a foreign tongue. But it says brave or bright or progressive things. It lifts itself toward some sparkle in the adventurous sky above it. I have been in New York and raised my eyes to the heavens and seen, in my mind’s eye, at least, a thousand glittering spires which were the reflection not of the monstrous shafts of granite about me but of the City behind the city, the great, mad, impressive, unresting urge upon which the infinite foundations of this finite metropolis are built. It was awesome but it was not fearful. Marlborough, I tell you, is different.”
Lathrop stirred uneasily, his enormous bulk swaying forward to a strident creaking of the chair.
“I told you when you first came here that Marlborough was different,” he said. The shadow of a growing perplexity was in his eyes.
“I know you did,” responded Dreeme, “and telling me so much you told me nothing. You told me there was a breed of New Englanders here that I had never seen before. I admit it now. But why is this breed different? You did not tell me that. You told me that a mixture of ethical and Dionysiac madnesses produced the forefathers of these people, of the Bidwells and Barnsons and Westcotts and Slaters. Well, what does that mean? You opened the door of a dark room to me, a door which I should have pushed open myself sooner or later, but you did not give me any lamp. Do you know what the sensation is that I have when I think of Marlborough?”
Lathrop shook his head slowly, the loose chins beneath his round face wagging like the wattles on a cock.
“I think constantly of a horrible dead body, a white leprous mass of flesh, that is striving to live,” answered Dreeme in a low voice. “The dark circles of the closed eyes quiver, the blue lips roll back, and the long fingers, struggling against rigor mortis, slowly open. There are only shadows in the palms of the hands.”
“Good God!” exclaimed Lathrop, reaching hastily for his cup of cold tea. After a moment he laughed in his wheezing way.
“You have the imagination of a penny-dreadful,” he remarked.
“Have I?” asked Dreeme. “Do you really think so, doctor?”
Lathrop drank the last swallow of his chilled beverage and then put the cup back and turned to his corncob pipe.
“Look here, Daniel,” he commanded. “Do you want me to prescribe for you? You’re suffering from nerves. Your digestion is bad. Do you sleep well? How about a nice vacation? Eh, what?”
Dreeme shook his head.
“I’m all right, Humphrey,” he said. “You can’t get rid of me in that way. You’ve got to tell me things.”
Lathrop sighed loudly.
“I was telling you things,” he remarked. “I was telling you what I believed. Let me go on. Perhaps there will be a clue in it for you.”
He paused for an instant and whistled loudly as his blue eyes roamed about the room.
“Let me give you some of my detached thoughts,” he said at last. “I believe in the sense of the past. I believe it to be a living urge in itself but I also believe that it may be explained. Any place that has been lived in long enough will rear a fine fabric of associated ideas stretching back through the centuries. I believe that a philosophy of living may be developed from this sense of the past. I believe that a philosophy of living may unhinge the brain if it is based on vague enough historical urges and cause a man to mistake supernormal phenomena for supernatural things. I believe in the power of the fanatic and so many things may be regarded as fanaticisms—the fanaticism of ego, of evil, of good, of superstition, of a displaced historical sense. This last one alone is worth a treatise in itself. I believe in the suggestion of the more powerful will and its might in causing lesser wills to pervert the realities into mysteries. I believe in the concerted suggestion of the crowd to formulate a seeming atmosphere in any community. Do these thoughts tell you anything about Marlborough?”
“In a way,” answered Dreeme. “But not enough. Give me the key to all this, Humphrey, for you must know it. You’ve lived here for half a century and you have had opportunities to observe.”
“No more than you have,” replied Lathrop quickly. “Haven’t I intimated to you that an idle curiosity was the worst of all evils? Daniel, you must not try to pry into things too closely. I could, perhaps, tell you enough to quicken your curiosity into an intolerable sneakiness. You would go about peering at people, watching their movements, spying upon their activities, surmising their thoughts and reactions and springs of being. And, sooner or later, you would be known for the Paul Pry you would be and your practice would be lost and it would be impossible for you to live in Marlborough. I tell you,” and the doctor slapped his fat knee loudly, “these people will not be watched and analyzed. Let well enough alone.”
Dreeme raised his eyebrows.
“I’m not a Paul Pry,” he said finally. Lathrop seemed to take this remark as a dismissal of the subject and his joviality, which had been somewhat dampened by Dreeme’s insistence, reasserted itself. He hammered the floor lustily with his cane and after a moment a long vinegary countenance thrust itself through the door.
“Lucinda,” ordered Lathrop, “bring
