“Is he so much older than his wife?” asked Dreeme with some surprise.
“Twenty years or so,” remarked Lathrop. “Martha is only twenty-five.”
“What!” exclaimed Dreeme.
Lathrop nodded.
“She’s always looked sort of ageless,” he said. “Westcott brought her up. They lived in the old Carrier house until it burned down. Then they went to Germany. When they came back seven or eight years ago they were married.”
The old doctor yawned and stretched his huge arms. He looked quizzically at Dreeme from beneath his eyebrows.
“So there you are, Daniel,” he said. “It is no story at all, you see.”
“Who do you think Westcott is?” inquired Dreeme.
“Well,” said Lathrop meditatively, “they say that old Uriah had a sort of cloven head. Perhaps he’s the man in the moon, Daniel.”
The soft chime of a clock broke in upon them and Dreeme counted six beats. It was time to go.
“You’re not telling me much about Jeffrey Westcott and his wife,” remarked the young doctor.
Lathrop shook his head despondently.
“I don’t know anything about them, I tell you,” he complained, a faint note of irritation in his voice. “I’ve never been inside their house. I haven’t talked to them for five years. I haven’t seen them. What do you want me to say, Daniel? Do you want me to invent a fine theory concerning them?”
“If you must,” said Dreeme. “But why not tell me the fine theory you have already invented?”
For an instant Lathrop nearly exploded. Then he said softly:
“Darn it!”
He looked at Dreeme in a woeful manner. He said:
“You will have something, won’t you?”
Leaning forward he grasped Dreeme’s hand in his huge soft paw.
“Good night, Daniel,” he articulated heartily. “Good night.”
Dreeme disengaged his hand and sat tightly in his chair.
“I have my supper early,” remarked Lathrop in a mildly protesting voice.
His chair creaked as he leaned back in it.
“I hate to talk about people,” he said in a loud voice. “It means no good, I tell you.”
There was a loud crash in the room and both men sat upright suddenly and stared about them. Lathrop’s can of shag had slipped from the table to the floor. The dark curling tobacco lay in an untidy heap between them. The can rocked on its round side for a moment and then ceased.
“Humphrey,” said Dreeme, “you have thought a lot about the Westcotts. You’ve even studied their hereditary strain. You describe a villain and a madman to me and then you introduce a man who has studied in Germany. God knows what he studied. The Black Arts, perhaps.”
“There aren’t any Black Arts,” interjected Lathrop, gazing woefully at his tobacco.
“He studied something, anyway,” went on Dreeme, ignoring the interruption, “and I will venture to assert that it was neither differential calculus nor Emmanuel Kant. He is still studying it. He’s an abnormal creature and so is his wife. Why have you kept hinting at some sort of a fanaticism and pointing out the difference between supernormal and supernatural and insisting on the melancholia of Peleg Carrier?”
Lathrop made a motion as though washing and wiping his hands.
“I refuse to be led into wild theories, Daniel,” he said. “I base my opinions on facts. Any other process means eventual madness. Good Lord, how do you suppose I have lived here for half a century without turning into a sheer lunatic? Principally by minding my own business, which I advise you to do. And by treating a fact as a fact and letting it carry me no farther.”
The twilight, shot with the spent gold of the afternoon, curdled about the corners of the room. It dusted in through the windows and rolled in wispy vapors over the heads of the two men. It crept along the floor and eddied beneath the tables and chairs. Dreeme felt the slow tide rising about his feet and curling about his hands. He made an impatient movement as though to brush it from him. He started to feel Lathrop’s hand suddenly placed on his knee.
“Daniel,” said the old doctor, “thought is a terrible thing. You are too young to grow morbid. Your nerves are on edge. Let them rest. Forget the Westcotts and forget your mystery of Marlborough. It is only by new thought, by bright strenuous acceptances that this sad land may be translated from the barren graveyard of Puritan traditions to the New World that is our heritage. I will not give you half-baked notions to feed on for then you would grow as somber as the people you see about you. I’ve told you what I know about the Westcotts and if I have certain personal reactions to them and to the people in this community it is far better that I keep them to myself. I, at least, can cage my thoughts and let them grumble there and hurt no one. You are too young to keep your opinions to yourself and they would escape and end by devouring you. Eat, sleep, read, do your work, my boy. That is all that you need do.”
“You’ve not kept a single thing from me, have you, Humphrey?” said the young doctor accusingly.
Lathrop pursed his great lips and refused to meet Dreeme’s eyes.
The twilight edged the young man toward the door and he rose reluctantly. Humphrey Lathrop’s huge bulk eased back in his chair to a noisy creaking. He smiled agreeably. Dreeme picked up his hat and held out his hand to the old doctor.
“I’ll drop in and see you soon, Humphrey,” he said.
“That’s the boy,” wheezed Lathrop, patting the back of his hand. “That’s the boy.”
