The Place Called Dagon

materialistic lust that knew no bounds. And in other places, in the agricultural corners of the land, a kindlier albeit somewhat threadbare tradition manifested itself. Dreeme knew for he had lived in those other portions of the old New England and had seen how drastically the land had changed. An occasional Puritan strain, a brief old-world courtesy⁠—a trifle grim, to be sure, and a propped-up pride still persisted, but for the most part it was as Humphrey Lathrop had said⁠—a land of curiosity, hypocrisy, labor, and stinginess. It was true that in certain secluded corners, in sun-dappled village streets, in twisted roads bordered by crumbling stone fences, in thinned woodlands flashing with the slim-white trunks of swaying birches, a hint of the old New England lingered for the pilgrim imaginative enough to sense it, a hint of mellow days and grave silences. It glowed at its brightest in the red cheeks of the apples and the gold and crimson of the sumach. It was there like a wistful ghost roaming through deserted roads. But it was not in Marlborough and no historical perspective could satisfy Dreeme as to why the community emanated the atmosphere which it undoubtedly did.

He might say that these farmers were the successors of the iron-willed pioneers who had darkened the soil with their blood and sweat, but that was not saying enough. They were all this, and they were something more beside. Behind them was something secret and profound. Under the layers of generations. Although they might be no more than vaguely conscious of it, Dreeme was almost satisfied in his mind that the nature of these natives was colored and subdued by a breed of ancestors who had possessed some inexplicable outlet for their suppressed madnesses. The young doctor could give no logical reasons for his conviction, but there it was. Perhaps Humphrey Lathrop had hinted it to him. These people differed from the other New Englanders, argued Dreeme to himself, in that they had been diverted in some mysterious manner from the obvious development of the New England temperament. Fortune had strangely enough sequestered this community and kept it intact through so many years and generations that the ancient characteristics had persisted on. No influx of foreigners with their European schemes of living had muddied it, for foreigners did not come here. No manufacturing boom had smashed it to pieces and founded a new world upon it. Marlborough stretched out beneath the summer sun and awaited the investigation of the close student of ethnology. Although its doors and windows might be open it seemed as though invisible skeins of mystery swayed before these apertures and defeated the eyes of the brain and intuitions. Dreeme seemed more conscious of this than ever as he perfected his toilet and prepared for what the day might offer. His dormant curiosity, which he had stilled so well, lifted a sluggish head and peered curiously about.

The young doctor descended the stairs slowly for the breakfast which had been prepared for him by his next-door neighbor, Mrs. Slater.

II

Mrs. Slater was methodical. It was her duty to run in during the morning with Dreeme’s breakfast and the mail which she collected at the post office when she did her early morning buying. She never called it “shopping.” For his dinner (served at noon in Marlborough) and supper Dreeme crossed over to Mrs. Slater’s house where he sat in the midst of five pop-eyed children, speechless Walden Slater, the Reverend George Burroughs⁠—invariably called “Preacher” by the community, and Mrs. Slater herself, a small, plump, dumpy woman, originally from Leeminster, who was rather more officious than practical. Not being “born Marlborough” she did not affect the complete reticence of her neighbors. Still, she had lived in the community long enough to learn to refrain from displaying curiosity about things. It was only by a fluttering of her eyes and a somewhat cross-eyed inspection of things in general that she revealed the fact that she was aware of matters which puzzled her. It was this fluttering of the eyes that greeted Dreeme as he entered the room back of his office on the ground-floor, a room which served as a breakfast chamber and a study. He immediately understood that she had heard the arrival of the horse in the night, and he waited, a trifle maliciously, to see if she would refer to it. He had never looked at her intently, and he did not intend to do so now. Indeed, he had never looked at any of the Slater ménage with enough curiosity to fix their features in his mind. He had a general idea, of course, of Slater and the “Preacher,” one was slouchy and the other was dark, but he could not tell the children apart. Indeed, he was uncertain as to their sex. Were three of them boys and two girls, or was it the other way around? He sat down at the table smiling to himself.

Mrs. Slater scurried about the table, removing the blue china cover from the platter of fried eggs and ham and pushing the three letters closer to Dreeme’s plate. There was a highly symbolic dolphin on the blue china cover. It served as a handle. It was a bad handle now for its tail had been smashed off during some disastrous washing.

“It seems as though I would work myself to death,” Mrs. Slater said in her peculiarly breathless voice. “I was out of bed at five-thirty this morning getting Walden off to the field. That man sleeps like a log. You have to shake him and shake him. And now it’s you. And then it will be the boys.”

“You don’t have to shake me, anyway, Mrs. Slater,” said Dreeme, his mouth full of toast.

A small woman shaking a huge man. Get up! Get up! A poodle snapping at a somnolent St. Bernard. Mrs. Slater sighed, fluttered her eyes, and gazed in a very cross-eyed manner at the design on the wallpaper.