The vinegary face grew still longer. A thin mouth, a mere slit in the wrinkled face, shrivelled in severe disapproval.
“You had some applejack this mornin’,” announced a high nasal voice.
“I’m going to have some more now,” answered Lathrop blandly.
The visage swayed for a moment in the doorway and then disappeared to the sound of a loud sigh.
Lathrop winked at Dreeme.
“The old fool,” he said. “Lucinda’s been with me for forty years and she still considers me a giddy dissipated youth.”
“Do you believe in God?” asked Dreeme suddenly, apparently giving utterance to some train of thought in his mind. It was now Lathrop’s turn to sigh as loudly as Lucinda had sighed.
“Daniel, Daniel,” he said, shaking his head. “Can you tell me what you mean by God?”
“That’s the old way of evasion,” said Dreeme impatiently. “Do you believe we exist as individuals after we die?”
“I believe we exist as individuals in a thousand and one ways and eyes and minds and words spoken or written,” answered the old doctor.
“Do you believe that we exist in the consciousness of ourselves as individuals after we die?” persisted Dreeme.
“I do not,” answered Lathrop wearily.
Dreeme slipped back into his train of thought and a moment or so sped by while the stillness of the room was broken only by the buzzing of the fly still entangled in the window-curtain. It shrilled loudly as it darted blindly from the soft folds of cloth to the hard surface of the transparent pane of glass.
“Even in life,” added Lathrop, “I do not believe that we exist as individuals in ourselves, although, of course, our consciousnesses, being what they are, can tell us nothing else.”
The door swung open and Lucinda’s vinegary face appeared over the tray upon which perched the amber-hued applejack bottle and two greenish tumblers. She stalked silently to the table and deposited her burden upon it. Lucinda was tall and spare and her arms were extraordinarily thin. Her long face, small black eyes, and pursed mouth registered a deep disapproval beneath the thin graying hair, tied in a back-knot, that covered her narrow head.
“I should think one glass might be enough for you, Humphrey,” she complained, backing from the table like a tall and awkward colt. At the door she turned to add a final word.
“And young men might do better than sit drinkin’ alcohol when there’s plenty of sick people about needin’ attention.”
The door closed noisily behind her. Lathrop’s wheezing chuckle followed her to the kitchen.
“The old fool,” he said softly and tenderly as he poured out the amber liquor.
Dreeme accepted the tumbler that was offered him in an absentminded manner, placing it on the edge of the table. He sighed loudly and Lathrop, gazing over the top of his glass, scowled pleasantly but said nothing.
“Why do you sidetrack me, Humphrey, whenever I mention the Westcotts?” inquired the young man at length with asperity in his voice.
“Did I?” asked Lathrop mildly.
Dreeme did not answer but took a brief swallow of applejack.
“Good, isn’t it?” questioned the old doctor with a fair degree of enthusiasm. “The national tipple of New England,” he went on. “Eve’s brew,” he concluded, draining off the tumbler.
“What do you know about Eve?” taunted Dreeme with a wan smile.
Lathrop wheezed for a full minute, and then, reaching over with a great effort, dug at Dreeme’s ribs. Then his face sobered.
“Oh dear!” he said. And then: “I didn’t sidetrack you, Daniel. I merely ignore you.”
Dreeme finished his drink slowly and put the tumbler down. He said:
“I shall find out about the Westcotts, I have been in the farmhouse and I can go again.”
“Did they invite you back?” inquired Lathrop.
The young man stared moodily across the table. Lathrop smiled blithely and poured himself a second tumbler of applejack.
“You’ll get tipsy,” remarked Dreeme.
“No such luck!” wheezed the old doctor. “I was brought up on this drink. I sucked it in at my mother’s knee.”
“That’s a lie,” answered Dreeme. “You were not permitted to drink anything stronger than milk at home.”
“How did you know that, Daniel?” asked Lathrop with mild surprise. He drained half the tumbler and wiped his mouth. Dreeme sat doggedly in his chair.
“Very well,” said the old doctor with a sigh of defeat. “I give up. What do you want to know about the Westcotts?”
“Everything,” announced Dreeme. He did not change his position but a brief light of excitement danced in his eyes.
Lathrop shook his head. “I can’t tell you that,” he said, “because I don’t know everything. But I’ll tell you what I do know and you may make the most of it. With this preamble. …” He cleared his throat. “You just wear a man down, Daniel. I’m departing from the rule of a lifetime. Much good may it do you or me!”
He filled his ubiquitous pipe and lighted it. A piratical odor assailed the air.
“I came to Marlborough in ’57,” he said. “New England in ’57 was a strange place. The old world was breaking into pieces and there were faint, very faint glimmers of a new order of things. It was the days shortly after Dan Webster had thrown his party. Charles Sumner was being assaulted in his seat in the Senate and the Abolitionists were roaring their heads off. It was a curious time because the Republic was rushing straight to perdition. It was State’s Rights and ‘nigger, nigger, who’s got the nigger’ all the time. There was always a nigger in somebody’s woodpile. Up popped a woolly head and the farmers who had no use for nigger-labor grunted like hedgehogs for Abolition. I was pretty young and careless about the destiny of our revered Republic so I did not cogitate too much about things (you’d call them phenomena, Daniel) that were for me no more than theoretical problems. It was my business to explore the highways and byways of Marlborough, fish the streams, go fowling for bats, pick blueberries, and sleep in the sun. I don’t imagine I thought much about the people
