“How are you, Mrs. Slater?” he asked.
Mrs. Slater fluttered her eyes and coughed an intimation that she was not so well. Dreeme perceived that she did not like Westcott, but was making an effort to conceal her instinctive antagonism. There was fear in this effort. The farmer’s eyes roved about the room, casually inspected the books in the little case, and then reverted to Deborah.
“I’ve the horse here,” he said to her. “I’ll take you back now.”
“She’s not going back with you, Mr. Westcott,” interposed Dreeme dryly. “She’s not going back at all.”
Mrs. Slater opened her mouth with a cluck.
“Not at all,” repeated Dreeme, giving him a defiant look.
Westcott continued to regard the girl.
“Weren’t you coming back with me, Deborah?” he asked in a low silky voice.
A strange thing happened. Deborah rose to her feet slowly and took a single step toward the farmer. His dark eyes were fastened piercingly upon her now. Dreeme jumped from his chair and turned the girl around. Instantly she burst into tears.
“Don’t let me go,” she pleaded.
“I know now,” said Dreeme. He faced Westcott with a smile. He added:
“Try that on me. See if it will work on a man.”
Westcott lowered his cloven head.
“Really, doctor,” he said in a mild voice, “I don’t understand you.”
He, too, was smiling slightly.
“You neglected to send your bill,” he went on.
Fumbling in his pocket he drew forth a brand-new five dollar bill, and, limping forward, laid it on the table.
“There,” he said. “We are quits. Let us hope that we may remain quits.”
He opened his eyes and gazed full into Dreeme’s face. There was absolutely no expression in his look. It was like the meaningless stare of a blind man. Paying no more attention to Deborah he turned to Mrs. Slater.
“Is Walden in the fields?” he asked.
She nodded, and he swung on his heel.
“Good morning, doctor. Good morning, Mrs. Slater,” he said. He ignored Deborah. An instant later they heard his lame thumping through the hall, and then the closing of the front door. Dreeme absently picked up the bill. On it was scrawled:
“Even a fool may learn wisdom.”
II
The Reverend George Burroughs stretched his long yellow hand out and grasped a slice of bread. He made it a point to take the fattest cut. Dreeme, watching from beneath lowered lids, noted that the preacher’s hand was shaped like a claw. The fingers curled back like the crazy-shaped bits of driftwood he had seen washed up on the tip of Cape Cod years ago, when, as a boy, he had made a vacation trip to those rolling dunes of white sand. Indeed, the Reverend George Burroughs himself was very like something that had been washed up on the beach. Some sort of skinny sea-monster, an old merman who was half seahorse. It was time to keep an eye on the preacher. Dreeme looked up at Burroughs and discovered that the man of God apparently was thinking the same thought, for his expressionless eyes were fastened upon the young doctor over the bread that he was cramming into his capacious mouth. Burroughs masticated loudly and continued to stare at Dreeme. The pupils of his eyes were like two black shoe buttons. He had never done that before. He had always averted his eyes or dropped them to the heaped plate above which he constantly hovered so eagerly. Dreeme was less startled than amused. If he had entered into the old hypocrite’s line of vision at last so much the worse for the old hypocrite. He would give him something to look at. Something to think about. The old night-wanderer! The old fool who poked his horse-like face into burned mills to see what he might see! The withered employment agency for the Westcott farm! Dreeme remarked calmly:
“You enjoy evening strolls, preacher.”
Burroughs, his mouth clogged with bread, nodded slowly.
Dreeme awaited an answer, and as none was forthcoming apparently, he transferred his attention to the rest of the table. He had sat so many times at this board and had seen nothing and understood everything. Now he saw everything and understood nothing. This noon, for instance, it was simple enough to perceive that a general unrest pervaded the secretive diners. It was even communicated to the children, who gazed frightenedly from face to face, seeking for the reassurance of an unslipped mask, for a visage that did not suggest the complexities of perturbation. Mrs. Slater, her cheeks heightened in color—tiny scarlet flags mutely calling for aid—and her eyes fluttering, was plainly disaffected and at odds with circumstances. Walden Slater was so upset that he ate meagerly. His long camel-like upper lip closed half-heartedly over the mouthfuls that he balanced precariously on the flat blade of his knife. The preacher was puzzled, a bit startled, perhaps, to find Dreeme thrust into his scheme of things for he must have heard all about the young doctor’s championship of Deborah. Deborah! She, at least, was real. Though Dreeme did not know these other people he knew her. She smiled briefly across the table at him, and it was as though she had flung him a flower. A small blue flower with a starry heart tossed across a table of strangers. A flower as blue as her eyes were blue, as starry as the pupils of her eyes. He smiled back at her broadly. The smile was intercepted by everybody at the table. He enjoyed their reactions to it. Mrs. Slater nipped at it as a parrot nips at a cracker. The children thrust little faces of ice between it and Deborah. Walden Slater retreated from it in a bewildered manner, and then, to Dreeme’s pleasant surprise, wrung the doleful ghost of an accompanying smile from his long lip and tossed it gingerly to Deborah. The Reverend George Burroughs observed it impassively and blew a little cloud of
