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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Brentons, by Anna Chapin Ray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Brentons
+
+Author: Anna Chapin Ray
+
+Illustrator: Wilson C. Dexter
+
+Release Date: June 8, 2007 [EBook #21763]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRENTONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from scans of public domain material produced by
+Microsoft for their Live Search Books site.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+NOVELS BY
+
+ANNA CHAPIN RAY
+
+THE DOMINANT STRAIN
+BY THE GOOD STE. ANNE
+ON THE FIRING LINE
+HEARTS AND CREEDS
+ACKROYD OF THE FACULTY
+QUICKENED
+THE BRIDGE BUILDERS
+OVER THE QUICKSANDS
+A WOMAN WITH A PURPOSE
+THE BRENTONS
+
+
+[Illustration: Catia put her elbows on the table and clasped her hands
+around her cup.
+
+Frontispiece. _See Page_ 84]
+
+
+
+
+THE BRENTONS
+
+
+
+BY
+
+ANNA CHAPIN RAY
+
+Author of "A Woman with a Purpose," "The Bridge Builders," etc.
+
+
+
+WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
+WILSON C. DEXTER
+
+
+
+BOSTON
+LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
+1912
+
+_Copyright, 1912,_
+By Little, Brown, and Company.
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+Published, January, 1912
+
+THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+Beginning with Chapter 19 the spelling of Kathryn inexplicably changes
+to Katherine.
+
+The Table of Contents is not contained in the original book. It has
+been generated for the convenience of the reader.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE                         CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
+CHAPTER  TWO                        CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
+CHAPTER THREE                       CHAPTER NINETEEN
+CHAPTER FOUR                        CHAPTER TWENTY
+CHAPTER FIVE                        CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
+CHAPTER SIX                         CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
+CHAPTER SEVEN                       CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
+CHAPTER EIGHT                       CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
+CHAPTER NINE                        CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
+CHAPTER TEN                         CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
+CHAPTER ELEVEN                      CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
+CHAPTER TWELVE                      CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN                    CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN                    CHAPTER THIRTY
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN                     CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN                     CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
+
+
+
+
+THE BRENTONS
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+
+However archaic and conventional it may sound, it is the literal fact
+that young Scott Brenton was led into the ministry by the prayer of his
+widowed mother. Furthermore, the prayer was not made to him, but
+offered in secret and in all sincerity at the Throne of Grace.
+
+"Oh, my dearest Lord and Master," she prayed, at her evening devotions
+upon her knees and with her work-roughened hands clasped upon the gaudy
+patchwork quilt; "guide Thou my son. Bring him to feel that his perfect
+happiness can come only from going forth to preach Thy word to all
+men."
+
+And, as it chanced, the door of her room had been left slightly open.
+Scott Brenton, young and alert and full of enthusiasms which his years
+of grinding work and economy had been powerless to down, came leaping
+up the steps just then. The front door had been left unlocked for him.
+He closed it noiselessly behind him, and then started to run up the
+stairs. The murmur of his mother's voice checked him, stayed his step a
+moment, and then changed its pace. He went on up the stairs quite
+soberly, thoughtful, his face a little overcast.
+
+It was now the middle of the Christmas holidays of his junior year. The
+day he had left college for the short vacation, his chemistry professor
+had sent for him and had said things to him about his last term's work
+and about his examination papers at the end of the term. The things
+were courteous as concerned the past; to Scott Brenton's mind, they
+were dazzling as concerned the future. The dazzle had endured until his
+mother's words had fallen on his ears. Then it had eclipsed itself,
+leaving him to wonder whether, after all, it had not been the _ignis
+fatuus_ of self-elation, and not the steady glow of truth. Scott
+Brenton was not much more given to introspection, at that epoch of his
+life, than is any other healthy youngster of nineteen. None the less,
+he slept curiously little, that night.
+
+Next morning, while he dressed, he kept his teeth shut cornerwise, a
+habit he had when he was making up his mind to any noxious undertaking.
+Then he went downstairs, to find his mother smiling contentedly to
+herself, while she added the finishing touches to the breakfast. It was
+sausage, that morning, Scott Brenton always remembered afterwards. They
+had been chosen out of deference to his boyish appetite. He never
+tasted them again, if he could help it. They seemed to have added to
+their already strange assortment of flavours a tang of bitterness that
+bore the seeds of spiritual indigestion.
+
+His mother looked up to greet him with an eagerness from which she
+vainly sought to banish pride. He was her only child, her all; and he
+was sufficiently good to look upon, clever enough to pass muster in a
+crowd. To her adoring eyes, however, he was a mingling of an Adonis
+with a Socrates. And she herself, by encouragement and admonition and
+self-denying toil, had helped to make him what he was. Small wonder
+that her pride in him could never be completely downed! Nevertheless,--
+
+"Have a good time, last night?" she asked him tamely.
+
+But she missed a certain young enthusiasm from his accent, as he
+answered,--
+
+"Fine!"
+
+"Catie there?" she asked again, with the crisp elision of one whose
+life has been too strenuous to waste itself in the more leisurely forms
+of speech.
+
+"Yes. Is breakfast ready?"
+
+She nodded, as she speared the sizzling sausages one by one and
+transferred them to a platter. Then, while she poured off a little of
+the fat by way of gravy, she put yet another question.
+
+"Look pretty?" she said.
+
+Her son felt no difficulty in applying the question to Catie, the
+proper object, rather than to the sausages on which his mother's gaze
+was bent.
+
+"About as usual," he said temperately.
+
+His mother laughed out suddenly. The laugh brought back to her face a
+faint resemblance to the girl who, as the pretty daughter of old Parson
+Wheeler, had been the acknowledged belle of all the small community.
+Later on, all the small community had been jarred to its social
+foundations by the discovery that Betty Wheeler, child of a long, long
+line of parsons, was going to marry Birge Brenton who had come to
+"clerk it" in the village store. She did marry him, and, a little later
+on, and most obligingly for all concerned, he died. Few people mourned
+him. His wife, though, was among the few. She had a conscience of
+Puritan extraction, and the keenest possible sense of what was seemly.
+
+Scott, at the time, was ten days old; therefore he did not share her
+mourning. Indeed, he was too busy trying to adjust himself to things in
+general and pins in particular to have much energy or time left over to
+spare for thinking about other people. Already, the trail of Mrs.
+Brenton's reading ancestors had led her to the naming her child Walter
+Scott. Her sense of decorum caused her to wonder vaguely, after her
+husband died, whether it would not be proper to change the baby's name
+to Birge. Her wonderings, though, merely served to render her uneasy;
+they bore no fruit in action. The associations with the name were not
+of the sort she cared to emphasize, and the boy was allowed to keep his
+more impressive label.
+
+As time went on, though, he rebelled against the childish Wally and
+insisted on the Scott, but prefixed by the blank initial whose
+significance, he fondly hoped, would permanently remain a mystery. A
+month, however, after he had entered college, he was known as Ivanhoe
+to all the class who knew anything about him at all; and, in the
+catalogue published in his sophomore year, he was registered quite
+curtly as Scott Brenton. Never again in all his lifetime did the
+incriminating _W_ reappear.
+
+If his mother felt regretful for the change, she was far too wise to
+show it. Indeed, it is quite likely that she felt no regrets at all. By
+the time that Scott came to his 'teens, Mrs. Brenton was doing her
+level and conscientious best to conceal from him the demoralizing fact
+of her belief that he could do almost no wrong, and she clung to the
+modifying _almost_ with a passionate fervour born of her clerical
+ancestry and her consequent belief in the inherent viciousness of
+unconverted man. Moreover, her inherited notions of conversion included
+spiritual writhings and physical night-sweats and penitential tears by
+way of its accomplishment. According to the creed of all the Parson
+Wheelers since the Puritan migration, one became a Christian rather
+violently, and not by leisurely unfolding. It had been to her the
+greatest of all reliefs since the unconfessed one born of her husband's
+premature removal, when the young Walter Scott had got himself
+converted by means of an itinerant revivalist. From that time on, her
+gaze had been fixed unfalteringly upon the hour when he should assume
+the mantle of his clerical grandparents; and she inclined to look upon
+his other talents as being so many manifestations of diabolic
+ingenuity.
+
+And now, these Christmas holidays, the diabolism seemed to her to be
+rampant; it effervesced through all Scott's being like the mysterious
+things he brewed within his test-tubes. Not that Mrs. Brenton would
+have known a test-tube by sight, however. She only had gleaned from her
+son's talk the fact that they existed and held fizzy compounds which
+would kill you, if you drank them. Perhaps her analogy was all the
+better for her lack of specific knowledge. In any case, she saw and
+feared the effervescence. The sausages and the white bowl of hot fat
+gravy were so much carefully considered bait to lure her son back into
+the paths of orthodox uprightness. While they were being
+swallowed--slowly, by reason of their mussiness--she had certain things
+she wished to say to him.
+
+To her extreme surprise, Scott said them first to her.
+
+"Mother," he said, a little bit imperiously considering his age; "no
+matter now about Catie. I want to talk to you about--"
+
+"About?" she queried nervously, while he hesitated under what obviously
+was a pretext of picking out the brownest sausage.
+
+"About--myself."
+
+Her nervousness increased.
+
+"Take some more gravy, Scott," she urged him hurriedly. "You'd better
+dip it on your bread as soon as you can; it gets cold so soon, these
+winter mornings."
+
+But he ignored the spoon she offered him. When he spoke, it was with a
+curious hesitation.
+
+"Mother, did I tell you what Professor Mansfield said?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Weren't you glad--just a very little?" His tone was boyish in its
+pleading.
+
+Mrs. Brenton's answer was evasive.
+
+"Of course, Scott. I am always glad, when your teachers speak well of
+you," she said.
+
+"Yes; but think of it," he urged impatiently. "I hate to brag, mother;
+but do you take in all he meant: that he saw no reason, if I kept on,
+that I should not make a record as a chemist?"
+
+While he spoke, his gray eyes were fixed on her imploringly. Under some
+conditions and in some connections, she would have been swift to read
+in them the text of his unspoken prayer; but not now. Her ancestral
+tendencies forbade: those and the doubts which centred in her son's
+other heritage, less orthodox and far, far less under the domination of
+the spiritual. Now and then the boy looked like his father,
+astoundingly like, and disturbingly. This was one of the times.
+
+Across his young enthusiasm, her answer fell like a wet linen sheet.
+
+"But are you going to keep on?"
+
+He tried to regain his former accent.
+
+"That is what I want to decide, right now," he said as buoyantly as he
+was able. "Of course, it isn't just what I started out to do; but he
+seemed to feel it was my chance, and you and I, both of us, have been
+used to taking any chance that came. What do you think I'd better do?"
+
+For a moment, she worked fussily at the twisted wire leg of the tile
+that held the coffee pot. Her eyes were still upon the wire, when at
+last she answered.
+
+"You must do as you think right, my son."
+
+"But what do you really think, yourself?" he urged her.
+
+This time, she lifted her eyes until they rested full upon his own.
+
+"It isn't exactly what we have planned it all for, Scott. Still, it may
+be that this will be the next best thing, after all."
+
+"Then you would be disappointed, if I took the chance?"
+
+She felt the edge of the coming renunciation in his voice and in his
+half-unconscious change of tense, and she dropped her eyes again, for
+fear they should betray the gladness that she felt, and so should hurt
+him.
+
+"Do you need to decide just now?" she asked evasively.
+
+"Between now and next summer."
+
+"Why not wait till then?"
+
+He crossed her question with another.
+
+"What's the use of waiting?"
+
+"You may get more light on it, if you wait," she said gravely.
+
+Scott shut his teeth hard upon an end of sausage. It seemed to him that
+it was only one more phase of the same futile whole, when his teeth
+encountered a hard bit of bone. And his mother sat there, outwardly
+impartial, inwardly disapproving, and talked about more light, when
+already his young eyes were blinded by the lustrous dazzle. Oh, well!
+It was all in the day's work, all in the difference between nineteen
+and thirty-nine, he told himself as patiently as he was able. And his
+mother at thirty-nine, he realized with disconcerting clearness, was
+infinitely older than Professor Mansfield's wife at sixty. Indeed, he
+sometimes wondered if she ever had been really young, ever really young
+enough to forget her heritage of piety in healthy, worldly zeal.
+Whatever the depths of one's filial devotion, it sometimes jars a
+little to have one's mother use, by choice, the phraseology of the
+minor prophets. In fact, in certain of his more unregenerate moments,
+Scott Brenton had allowed himself to marvel that he had not been
+christened Malachi. At least, it would have been in keeping with the
+habitual tone of the domestic table talk. And yet, in other moments, he
+realized acutely that that same heritage was in his nature, too. The
+village gossips had been exceedingly benevolent, in that they had
+spared him any inkling of the sources whence had come certain other
+strains which set his blood to tingling every now and then.
+
+Just such a strain was tingling now, as he laid down his knife and
+fork, rested his elbows on the table before him and clasped his hands
+tight above his plate.
+
+"I think I have all the light I am likely to get, mother," he said
+steadily.
+
+"But, if the light within thee be--"
+
+He checked her with a sudden petulant lift of his head. And, after all,
+it was not quite her fault. Life, for her, had been so hard and so busy
+that he ought not to grudge her the consolation she had been able to
+dig up out of the accumulated _debris_ of the ancestral trick of
+sermonizing. In a more gracious, plastic existence, she would have
+taken it out in Browning and the Russians; yet she was not necessarily
+more narrow because her literary artists were pre-Messianic. Neither
+was it the fault of those same artists that they were quoted in and out
+of season, and always for the purpose of clinching an obnoxious point.
+
+"It isn't," he said, as quietly as he was able. Then the boyishness
+pent up within him came bursting out once more. "Listen, mother," he
+said impetuously. "Really, this thing has got to be talked out between
+us to the very dregs. We may as well face it now as ever, and come to
+the final conclusion. I know you started out to make me into a
+minister. I know you feel that it is the one great profession of them
+all. But is it?"
+
+For a minute, her hands gripped each other; but they were underneath
+the hanging edge of tablecloth, and so invisible to Scott.
+
+"What can be greater than to speak the truth that makes us free?" she
+questioned.
+
+"Isn't there more than one kind of truth, mother?" he challenged her.
+
+"How can there be?"
+
+Again he shut his teeth and swallowed down his opposition. He was too
+immature to argue that there might be different facets to the selfsame
+truth.
+
+"Listen, mother," he began again, when he had proved to himself that he
+could rely upon his self-control. "As I say, I started out to be a
+minister, to be another Parson Wheeler in fact, if not in name. I know
+it has been your dream to hear me preach, some day or other. And I know
+how you have pinched and scrimped and worked, to give me the education
+that I was bound to need."
+
+"You have worked, too, Scott," she told him, in swift generosity. "You
+have tugged along and gone without things and worked hard, in your
+books and out of them. You know I have been proud of you; the credit
+for it isn't all mine, by any means."
+
+His young face flushed and softened. Unclasping his hands, he leaned
+across the table and laid his palm upon her fingers as they rested on
+the cloth beside her plate. Both palm and fingers were roughened and
+callous with hard work; but mother and son both were of that
+fast-vanishing class of folk who spell their _Education_ with the
+largest sort of capital letter. Their minds were alike, in that they
+both believed the work worth while, for the sake of all that it would
+be able to accomplish.
+
+"Thank you, mother," Scott said unsteadily. "I am glad you feel so,
+even if I don't deserve it." Then he steadied sharply and became
+practical. "So far, we've put it through, one way or the other," he
+went on. "Still, if I go in for the ministry," and his mother winced at
+the bald worldliness of his phrasing; "I shall have a year and a half
+more at college, and then three years of divinity school. We can do it,
+I suppose. For a matter of fact, I ought to be able to put it through
+alone, without a cent from you; but is it quite worth while? According
+to Professor Mansfield, if I keep steady, I can go straight from my
+degree into the laboratory as a paid demonstrator. It wouldn't be much
+pay, of course. Still, it would help along, and I could go on studying
+under him, all the time I was about it. By the time three years were
+over, the three years I would have to spend in the divinity school, I
+should be, ought to be, well upon my feet and walking towards a future
+of my own."
+
+His mother drew a long breath, as the swift torrent of words came to an
+end. Then,--
+
+"And at the end of twenty years, my son? That is the real question."
+
+Scott's enthusiasm all went out of him. His assent came heavily.
+
+"Yes," he admitted. "Yes. I suppose that is the real question, mother.
+It all depends--"
+
+She looked up at him sharply, as if in haste to probe the limits of his
+hesitation.
+
+"Depends?" she echoed.
+
+"Upon the way you feel about it, mother."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Not that," she offered swift correction; "but upon the question which
+is right. You are at the forking of the roads, the narrow and the
+broad. You are almost a man, Scott. I have no right to decide this for
+you; you must make your own choice for yourself. However, my son, you
+know my dreams for you; you know my prayers."
+
+And Scott Brenton, boy as he was in years, bowed his head in grave
+assent, and then and there made his great renunciation. He did know his
+mother's dreams; he had overheard, albeit unknown to her, her prayer.
+She had given all she had for him; his young honour, taking no thought
+for disastrous consequences, demanded that he should give up at least
+this one thing for her. He pushed back his chair, went around the table
+and laid one hand upon her shoulder.
+
+"I do know, mother dear. As far as I can, I will do my best to carry
+them all out."
+
+He bent above her in a brief, awkward caress, the caress of a man whose
+life has been too hard and too narrow to give him opportunity to
+perfect himself in the arts of masculine endearments. Then, leaving his
+breakfast half uneaten, he went away upstairs and shut the door of his
+own room behind him. A long hour later, he came down the stairs again,
+and went away in search of Catie.
+
+He hoped Catie would listen to him, and understand him and his crisis;
+but, all the time he hoped, he was conscious of a sneaking fear lest
+she would not. Scott loved to talk things out, and Catie, when she was
+not too busy otherwise, was a good listener. Nevertheless, her
+comprehensions were concrete and very, very finite.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+
+To all seeming, there always had been a Catie in Scott Brenton's life,
+always had been a Catie for him to seek in seasons of domestic stress
+or discipline. Indeed, his first memory of her was inextricably mingled
+with the recollections of an early spanking. Scott was naturally a good
+child, and Mrs. Brenton, as a rule, spanked cunningly, but very seldom.
+Now and then, she felt that circumstances justified the deed.
+
+Scott, seven years old and inventive withal, had been locked up in the
+house alone, one day, while his mother went to a particularly
+attractive funeral with carriages enough for even the outside circle of
+the mourners. One such mourner failing, she had been bidden to the
+vacant seat in the rearmost carriage, and her absence had been
+prolonged unduly. She came home, expecting to find Scott wailing loudly
+for his missing mother. Instead, she found him playing camp-out Indian,
+as he called it, with her best bed by way of wickiup, and the wickiup
+was provisioned lavishly and stickily from the resources of the closet
+where she kept her jams.
+
+Prudence and frugality demanded that Mrs. Brenton should remove her
+best clothes, before she essayed to administer justice at short range.
+Scott, left to himself, played on contentedly the while, until his camp
+was rudely invaded by a foe clad in a second-best petticoat and a
+shoulder shawl, and armed with a slipper which had seen better days.
+Even then, prudence cried out for yet another delay, for the young
+Indian was carrying so much of his commissariat upon his person that it
+seemed wise to wash him, before she proceeded to the spanking. Mrs.
+Brenton's point of view, moreover, was decidedly old-fashioned. Instead
+of rejoicing at this fresh manifestation of her boy's imagination, she
+concentrated all her remarks upon what she termed his theft, and she
+frugally used the period while she was scrubbing him, to drive her
+spoken condemnations home. Accordingly, it was a long, long time of
+duplex agony before the spanking finally achieved itself, and Scott,
+clean, but tingling from the slipper's impact, was told to go out and
+sit down on the doorstep and think over what a bad, bad boy he had
+been.
+
+Like Alexander the Less, he found the doorstep distinctly cooling to
+his fevered person, and he sat there contentedly enough, while he gave
+himself over to the luxury of bubbly sobs and of digging his fists into
+his weeping eyes. So absorbed was he in this soothing occupation that
+he paid no heed to the patter of approaching footsteps, until a voice
+fell on his ears.
+
+"Cry-baby!" the voice chirped, in the high key which, to the youthful
+mind, is expressive of disdain. And then it added even more
+disdainfully, "Dirty-face!"
+
+Dazed by this two-fold attack upon him, Scott took down his smudgy
+fists and displayed to the intruder's view his smudgy countenance. An
+older pair of eyes might easily have discovered cause for wonder that,
+in so short a time since his scrubbing, so great a quantity of mother
+earth could have found its way upward to mingle with his tears and form
+the dust that grimed his face. Despite his tears and his grime,
+however, Scott's manly temper roused itself to face his critic.
+
+"I ain't!" he bellowed hotly at the air around him, without troubling
+himself to look to see whence the strange voice had come.
+
+The voice reflected somewhat of his opposition.
+
+"You are, too. What's on your face?"
+
+"Blackberry jam and soap," Scott answered, with a craftiness beyond his
+years. He told the literal truth, but not all the truth. No need to
+inform this critical stranger what was the crust that lay on top of
+all.
+
+The critical stranger removed her pink countenance from the crack
+between the front-fence pickets, and pushed the gate open just a very
+little way. Seen through the larger crack, she stood revealed to Scott,
+a slim little damsel of perhaps six years, her pink calico frock
+starched until it stood out stiffly above her knees, and her topmost
+curl tied up with a mammoth bow of green gauze ribbon, obviously culled
+from some box of ancestral finery. She was a pretty child; but, even at
+that tender age, the decision of her little mouth and chin was too
+pronounced, the lift of her small head a trifle too self-satisfied.
+
+"What's the matter, cry-baby?" she inquired, as Scott's interest in her
+appearing was punctuated with a fresh gulp of woe.
+
+"I've been spanked."
+
+The critical light faded from her eyes, to be replaced by another
+light, this time of interest.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"I was playing Indian in mother's jam."
+
+Most damsels of that age would have asked for further particulars.
+Instead,--
+
+"Hh!" she sniffed, and the sniff spoke volumes as to the quality of her
+young imagination.
+
+Scott felt it lay upon him to defend himself from all which the sniff
+implied.
+
+"'Twas fun, too," he asserted suddenly, as, with a final wipe of his
+fist across his eyes, he dismissed the outward traces of his grief.
+"You get things to eat to take with you, and the bed's the camp, and
+you live there for years and always, all alone. And then they smell the
+things you're eating and--"
+
+"Who's they?" the small girl demanded.
+
+"Oh, wolves and Indians and things, and they come around and growl
+awfully. But you aren't afraid. You take your gun, and crawl in under
+the blankets and go on eating, sure they won't come in after you--"
+
+"What do you eat?"
+
+Had Scott been a few years older, he doubtless would have answered,--
+
+"Pemmican."
+
+As it was, however, he responded glibly,--
+
+"Snake meat."
+
+"Hh!" Again there came the sniff. "Snakes don't have meat. They only
+wiggle."
+
+Scott glared at her, during a moment of speechless hostility. Then
+suddenly he fired upon her with what was to be the favourite weapon of
+his later life.
+
+"Prove it!" he ordered her defiantly.
+
+But his defiance fell upon a surface quite impenetrable to its shaft.
+
+"Sha'n't!"
+
+"'Fraid cat!" he retorted curtly.
+
+"Ain't!"
+
+And then, for a short while, there was a silence. Out of the corner of
+her eye, the little girl was watching Scott. Scott, his head
+ostentatiously averted, was gazing at something he had dug up out of
+his trouser pocket, something concealed within the curve of his smudgy
+hand. Young as he was, his theories did not fail him. The silence
+prolonged itself for minutes which seemed to them both like hours. Then
+the eternal feminine yielded to the sting of curiosity.
+
+"What you got?" she asked him, as the gate swung open just a little
+wider.
+
+Scott was too canny to yield one whit of his advantage. His hand shut
+into a fist.
+
+"That's telling."
+
+The gate swung open wider yet, and the small girl marched through the
+opening.
+
+"Tell me," she said imperiously. "I want to see it."
+
+Scott still held himself aloof, still held his trophy concealed from
+her curious eyes. She tried to grasp his hand, missed it, then
+succeeded. Then she tried to pry open the tight-shut fingers.
+
+"Show me!" she ordered.
+
+He shook his head, smiling derisively at her, while her strong little
+fingers did their best to pluck open his hard little fist.
+
+Without another word, she bent above his hand. An instant later, the
+hand flew open, and the ball of the opening thumb showed the prints of
+small, sharp teeth.
+
+"What is it?" she asked once more.
+
+Scott's voice dropped to a murmur which was charged with mystery.
+
+"It's a back tooth of the whale that swallowed Jonah."
+
+Instantly she struck his hand a blow that sent his trophy flying off
+into the thick grass beside the step.
+
+"It is not," she said shrilly. "It's nothing but a dirty old chicken
+bone, so there!"
+
+And then, to the unspeakable astonishment of Scott, she seated herself
+upon the bottom step, smoothed her calico skirt across her little
+knees, and prepared to await further developments in tranquil comfort.
+It was thus that Scott Brenton first learned the lesson that the
+feminine mind only gains the fullest comfort in having the last word,
+when it is able to sit by and watch that word sink in and be digested.
+Later on in his life, the lesson was repeated again and again, with an
+increasing list of corollaries. Oddly enough, too, it was always given
+to him by the selfsame teacher, sometimes with mildness, sometimes with
+spiritual floggings.
+
+This time, however, she appeared to be contented with the form her
+teaching had taken, contented, too, with its effect upon himself.
+Accordingly, she made no effort to continue the discussion. She merely
+sat there, silent, in the place whence she had ousted him, and gloated
+on her victory, sure that in time his masculine impatience would lead
+him to break in upon the pause.
+
+She knew her man.
+
+"What's your name?" Scott asked her curtly, after an interval of
+digging one heel and then the other into the turf beside the step.
+
+"Catie."
+
+"Catie what?"
+
+"Catie Harrison."
+
+"Huuh!"
+
+She scented criticism in his reply.
+
+"It's better than yours is," she retorted.
+
+"It is not, too," he made counter retort. "Besides, you don't know my
+name."
+
+Slowly the little damsel nodded, once, twice.
+
+"Yes, I do. The man told me."
+
+"What man?"
+
+"The man that sells hens' eggs to my mother. I asked him, and he told
+me."
+
+Scott eyed her with fierce hostility. Was there no limit to this small
+girl's all-penetrating curiosity?
+
+"What is it, then?" he asked defiantly.
+
+"It's Walter Scott Brenton," she assured him. And then she added, by
+way of turning her triumph into a crushing rout, "I think it's the
+homeliest name I ever heard."
+
+And once again Scott Brenton gritted his teeth upon the fact that he
+was downed.
+
+Later, he took his turn for extracting information concerning his
+uninvited guest. He extracted it from herself, however, and with
+refreshing directness. At the advanced age of seven years, one sees no
+especial use in conventional beatings about the bush. One goes straight
+to the point, or else one keeps still entirely; and, at that phase of
+his existence, keeping still was not Scott Brenton's forte. Indeed, he
+was later than are the most of us in learning the lesson that the
+keenest social weapon lies in reticence.
+
+The starchy little damsel, it appeared, was the daughter of a petty
+farmer, lately come into the village. She was an only child; her home
+was the third house up the street, and her mother, busy about her
+household tasks and already a good deal under the thumb of her small
+daughter, considered her whole maternal duty done when the child was
+washed and curled and clothed in starch, and then turned out to play.
+Catie was able to look out for herself, Catie's mother explained
+contentedly to her new neighbours, and she knew enough to come home,
+when she was hungry. Best let her go her ways, then. She would learn to
+be a little woman, all the sooner; and, in the meantime, it was a great
+deal easier to do the housework without having a child under foot about
+the kitchen.
+
+And go her ways the little damsel did, with only her guardian angel to
+see to it that her way was not the wrong one. By the time her father's
+first week's rent was due, Catie had made acquaintance with every
+inhabitant of the village, from the Methodist minister down to the
+blacksmith's bob-tailed cat. Not only that; but Catie, by dint of many
+questions, had discovered why the Methodist minister's wife was buried
+in the churchyard with a slice of marble set up on top of her, and why
+the blacksmith's bob-tailed cat lacked the major portion of her left
+ear. If ever there was a gossip in the making, it was Catie Harrison.
+More than that, her accumulated gossip was sorted out and held in
+reserve, ready to be applied to any end that suited her small
+convenience. Scott Brenton found that fact out to his cost, when the
+story of his camp and his subsequent spanking came back upon him by way
+of the man that sold the hens' eggs, in retaliation for his refusal to
+ask that he himself and Catie should be allowed to have a ride in the
+egg-man's wagon. Catie might be but six years and nine months old; but
+already her infant brain had fathomed the theory of effectual relation
+between the crime and the punishment. Her ideal Gehenna would be made
+up of countless little assorted hells, not of one vast and
+indiscriminate lake of flaming brimstone. Perchance this very fact had
+its own due share of influence upon the later theology of Scott
+Brenton.
+
+That there would be influence, no one who watched the children could
+deny. After the first day's squabbles, perhaps even on account of them,
+they became inseparable. When they were not together, either Catie was
+looking for Scott, or Scott for Catie, save upon the too frequent
+occasions when discipline fell upon the two of them simultaneously and
+forced them into a temporary captivity. When they were held apart, they
+spent their time planning up new things to do together, once the
+parental ban was off their intercourse. When they were together, it was
+Scott who supplied the imagination for the pair of them. Catie's share
+lay in the crafty outworking of the plan. When their plans came to
+disaster, as often happened by reason of the boldness of Scott's young
+conceptions, Catie took the disappointment with the temper of a little
+vixen, kicked against the pricks and openly defied the Powers that Be.
+Scott, on the other hand, shut his teeth and accepted the penalty,
+already intent upon the question as to what he should undertake another
+time.
+
+And so the days wore on. To the adult mind, they would have seemed to
+pass monotonously. The quicker child perceptions, though, the
+magnifying point of view that makes a mountain out of every mole hill,
+caused them to seem charged with an infinite amount of variety and
+incident, full of enthusiastic dreams and thrills, and of crushing
+disappointments which, however, never completely ended hope. Scott's
+heritage from the long line of Parson Wheelers would have made him
+stick to the belief that two and two must always equal four, had it not
+been for that other heritage which kept him always hoping that some day
+or other it might equal five. Already, he was starting on a life-long
+quest for that same five, and Catie, nothing loath, went questing by
+his side. Catie, though, went out of the merest curiosity, and her
+invariable "I told you so" added the final, the most poignant sting to
+all of Scott's worst disappointments. At the mature age of six or
+seven, Catie Harrison showed quite plainly that no mere longing for a
+possible ideal would ever lure her from the path of practical
+expediency. She walked slowly, steadily ahead, while her boy companion
+leaped to and fro about her, chasing first one bright butterfly of the
+imagination and then another, only to clutch them and bring them back
+to her to be viewed relentlessly with prosaic eyes which saw only the
+spots where his impatient touch had rubbed away the downy bloom.
+
+And so the months rolled past them both, Catie the young materialist
+and potential tyrant, and Scott Brenton the idealist. The years carried
+the children out of the perpetual holidays of infancy and into the
+treadmill of schooling that begins with b, a, ba and sometimes never
+ends. Side by side, the two small youngsters entered the low doorway of
+the primary school; side by side, a few years later, a pair of lanky
+striplings, they were plodding through their intermediate studies which
+seemed to them unending. Catie was eagerly looking towards the final
+pages of her geography and grammar, for beyond them lay the entrance to
+another perpetual holiday, this time of budding maturity. Scott's eyes
+were also on the finish, but for a different reason. His mother, one
+night a week before his fourteenth birthday, had talked to him of
+college, of his grandfather, the final Parson Wheeler of the line, and,
+vaguely, of certain ambitions which had sprung up within her heart, the
+morning she had listened to the birth-cry of her baby boy.
+
+A week later, she had given him his grandfather's great gold pen,
+albeit with plentiful instructions to the effect that he was not to use
+it, but to keep it in its box, untarnished, until such time as he was
+fitted to employ it in writing sermons of his own. Scott had received
+the gift with veneration, and then quite promptly had summoned Catie to
+do reverence at the selfsame shrine. But Catie had rebelled.
+
+"Fudge!" she had said crisply. "What's the sense of having a useful
+thing like that, that you can't use?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+
+At the mature age of four, Scott Brenton's favourite pastime had been
+what he termed "playing Grandpa Wheeler." The game accomplished itself
+by means of a chair by way of pulpit, and a serried phalanx of other
+chairs by way of congregation, whom the young preacher harangued by the
+hour together. The harangues were punctuated by occasional bursts of
+song, not always of a churchly nature, and emphasized by gestures which
+were more forceful than devout. In this game Mrs. Brenton often joined
+him, lending her thin soprano voice to help out his quavering childish
+notes, and doing her conscientious best, the while, to keep the songs
+attuned to the key of proper piety. To be sure, she did insist upon
+bringing her sewing into church and, on one occasion, she patched her
+young son's trousers into a hideous pucker, by reason of her greater
+interest in the method of his expoundings.
+
+"Just for all the world like father!" she was wont to say. "But
+wherever did he pick it up, when father was in his grave, three years
+before the child was born?"
+
+The question was left unanswered by herself of whom she asked it. All
+too soon, moreover, it was joined by another question of similar
+import, but far more appalling. Indeed, where did the boy, where does
+any boy, pick up the tricks and manners and the phraseology of certain
+of his forbears who quitted the world before he fairly entered it? In
+Scott's case, the example was a flagrant one.
+
+At the starting of the game of "Grandpa Wheeler," Mrs. Brenton had been
+so charmed with the outworkings of heredity as to balk at nothing Scott
+might do: sermon, hymn, or even prayer. When she was sure of her role
+and had the leisure, she joined him in his imitative worship,
+delighting in the unconscious fashion in which the sonorous phrases of
+convention rolled off from her son's baby lips. And then, one day,
+Scott's memory failed him in his invocation. There came a familiar
+phrase or two, and then a babble of meaningless syllables, ending in a
+long-drawn and relieved Amen. An instant later, Scott lifted up his
+head.
+
+"Mo--ther," he shrilled vaingloriously; "I forgetted how it ought to
+go; but didn't I put up a bully bluff?"
+
+And, in consequence, Mrs. Brenton took her prayers into bed with her,
+that night. Some of them, even, lasted till the dawn.
+
+This was when Scott was only four. By the time he was fourteen, he took
+himself more seriously. He still played "Grandpa Wheeler" in
+imagination; but he no longer called it play, but plans. Already, he
+was looking forward to the hour when, in creaking Sunday shoes and
+shiny Sunday broadcloth, he should mount the stairs of the
+old-fashioned pulpit in the village church, gather the hearts of the
+waiting congregation within the welcoming and graceful gesture which
+would prelude his opening prayer, and then scourge those same hearts
+with the lashing truths which lead unto regeneration. He saw himself
+distinctly in this role, more distinctly, even, than in the blurry
+mirror before which he performed his morning toilet. It was no especial
+wonder that he did so. Ever since he had been old enough to pay heed to
+anything, his mother had been holding the picture up before his eyes.
+
+Catie, however, refused to be impressed by the picture.
+
+"What makes you want to be a minister?" she asked him. "I'd rather you
+kept a store. There's lots more money in it."
+
+"I don't see what difference it is going to make to you?" Scott
+answered rather cavalierly.
+
+Catie's reply was matter-of-fact, regardless of the sentimental nature
+of its substance.
+
+"Don't be stupid, Scott. Of course, we shall be married, when we get
+grown up, and then you'll have me to support."
+
+It was the first time she had announced this rather radical plan of
+hers, so it was no especial wonder that, for the moment, it took
+Scott's breath away. Not that he objected especially, however. It was
+only the novelty of the idea that staggered him. To his
+slowly-developing masculine mind, it never had occurred that he and
+Catie could not go on for ever, just chums and playmates and, now and
+then, lusty foes, without complicating their relations by more formal,
+final ties. He rallied swiftly, however.
+
+"Well, you'll have to marry a minister, then," he told her sturdily.
+
+Her nose wrinkled in disgust.
+
+"And wear shabby clothes and a bad bonnet, like Mrs. Platt, and have to
+go to all the funerals in town! How horrid! Oh, Scott, do be some other
+kind of a man. A minister's wife can't dance anything but the Virginia
+reel, nor play anything more than muggins. Why can't you be a dentist,
+if you won't keep a store?"
+
+For the once, Scott showed himself dominant, aggressive.
+
+"Because I'd rather preach. It's what all my people have always done."
+
+Then Catie made her blunder.
+
+"What about your father?" she asked, and her voice was taunting.
+
+Scott forgot his holy heritage and turned upon her swiftly.
+
+"Shut up!" he bade her curtly, and her cheek tingled under the blow he
+dealt her.
+
+It was the first time in his life that Scott had turned upon her with
+decision. Moreover, perchance it would have been better for him, had it
+not been the last.
+
+For three days afterward, the subject was as a sealed book between
+them. Then Catie broke the seals, and gingerly.
+
+"I have been thinking about your being a minister," she told him, as
+she dropped into step beside him, on the way to school. "Of course, you
+were very rude to treat me the way you did, the other day; and I hope
+you are sorry."
+
+Scott shut his teeth, although he nodded shortly. He had not enjoyed
+the three-day frost between himself and Catie; but he was sure that, in
+the final end, he had been in the right of it, even if he had been a
+little unceremonious in pressing the matter home on her attention.
+Moreover, his will had triumphed; Catie had been the one, not he, to
+break the silence. The casualness of her "Hullo!" that morning, had not
+deceived him in the least. He was perfectly well aware that she had
+lain in wait for his passing, her eye glued to the crack of the
+front-window curtains. The victory was his. He could afford to yield
+the minor point concerning manners, when he stood so firmly entrenched
+upon that other point which concerned the ministry.
+
+"Of course," he conceded guardedly; "I know I was beastly when I hit a
+girl."
+
+"Yes." Catie's accent was uncompromising. "It was a disgrace to you. I
+wonder you can look me in the face. If it had been any other boy, I
+never would have spoken to him again as long as I lived."
+
+"Really?" To her extreme disgust, Scott seemed to take her utterances
+merely as matter for scientific investigation.
+
+"Of course not," she said impatiently.
+
+"But why?" he asked her.
+
+"Why?" she flashed. "Because he wouldn't deserve to be spoken to, nor
+even looked at."
+
+"No; I don't mean that," the boy answered, still with the same apparent
+desire to probe the situation to the very bottom. "But why should you
+speak to me, and not to him?"
+
+She suspected him of fishing for a sweetie, and, out of sheer
+contrariety, she flung him a bit of crust.
+
+"Because I am used to you, I suppose. One gets so, after eight or nine
+years of growing up together." And, in that one sentence, Catie showed
+the practical maturity of her grasp on life and on Scott Brenton.
+
+Half way to the distant schoolhouse, she spoke again, this time more
+tactfully.
+
+"Never mind the spat, Scott. That's over and done with, even if you
+were horrid," she told him. "But really, now we're growing up, we ought
+to think things over and decide things." And, despite her short frocks
+and her childish face, her words held a curious accent of mature
+decision.
+
+"What sort of things?"
+
+"The things you are going to do, when you grow up."
+
+"I have decided, I tell you," he said stubbornly.
+
+"To be a country parson, all your days?" she queried flippantly.
+
+"To be a minister, yes. Not a country one, though."
+
+"Oh." She pondered. "What then?"
+
+He looked over her head, not so much in disdain as in search of a more
+distant vista.
+
+"In a city church, of course, a great stone church with towers and
+chimes and arches, and crowded full of people, and with their horses
+and carriages waiting at the doors," he answered, he who had never
+trodden a paved street in all his life.
+
+"Oh!" But, this time, the monosyllable was breathy, and not sharp.
+
+"Yes, and there will be a choir as good as those people who sang at the
+town hall, last Thanksgiving, and flowers, lots of them, roses in
+winter, even," he went on eagerly. "And you can hear a pin drop while I
+am preaching, only once in a while somebody will sob a little in the
+pauses, and then put in a roll of hundred-dollar bills when the
+contribution box comes round."
+
+Catie drew another long breath, and her eyes sparkled.
+
+"Lovely!" she said, and she stretched out the word to its full length
+by way of expressing her contentment. "And where'll I be?"
+
+Scott withdrew his eyes from distant space and gazed upon her blankly.
+
+"I hadn't thought about that," he said.
+
+Then, for an instant, the glory of his dream was shattered.
+
+"Pig!" Catie said concisely.
+
+However, it was not within the limits of her curiosity to drop the
+prediction at this piquant point. The framing of the picture, for so
+she regarded it, had pleased her. Scott failing, she must fill in the
+portrait to suit herself.
+
+"I'll tell you, then. I shall be there, in the very front seat, dressed
+in flowing curls," Catie's hair, at this epoch, was pokery in its stiff
+straightness; "and a real lace dress. And, after service, all the rich
+people in the church will ask us out to dinner. Of course, in a church
+like that, the minister's wife is always at the top of things, and I
+shall help along your work by making people like me and be willing to
+listen to your sermons because you are my husband."
+
+And then the two young egotists fell silent, each one of them lost in
+outlining a future in which he himself was the central point, the
+guiding principle of all things. Between the two of them, however,
+there was this one essential difference: Scott's forecastings were
+vague and rosy dreams, Catie's were concrete plans.
+
+None the less and despite that difference, from that time onward, it
+was tacitly agreed between the children that Scott would one day be a
+minister, with Catie for his wife. To be sure, it was Catie herself who
+supplied the latter clause, not Scott.
+
+"You'll have to have some sort of a wife," she argued superbly.
+"Ministers always do. It might as well be me. You like me better than
+any of the other girls, and I am used to having you around." And, upon
+this rocky basis of practicality, their young romance was built.
+
+Mrs. Brenton, meanwhile, looked on them with contented eyes, smiling a
+little now and then at the downright fashion in which the
+thirteen-year-old Catie made known her matrimonial plans. Mrs. Brenton
+liked Catie well enough, but not too well. She could have dreamed of
+another sort of wife for her boy, for Catie's crudeness occasionally
+irritated her, Catie's self-centred ambition, her intervals of density
+sometimes came upon Mrs. Brenton's nerves. However, girls were scarce
+upon the horizon of the Brentons. Catie was not perfect; but, at least,
+she might be infinitely worse. And Scott would be sure to need a
+practical wife, to counteract his habitual disregard of concrete
+things. Catie would see to it that his wristbands were not frayed and
+that his buttons were in their proper places. She might not enter into
+his ideals, but she would mend his socks and insist upon his changing
+them when he had wet his feet. Socks were more important to a man than
+mere ideals, any day, more important, that is, as concerned his
+conjugal relations. Scott could make up his ideals to suit himself. His
+socks must be prepared for him by wifely hands.
+
+Of course, they were only children now, only little children, too young
+to be thinking about such things as marriage. And yet--And Mrs. Brenton
+shook her head. And yet, were not the happiest marriages prearranged in
+just this way? Surely, this was far better as a preparation for wedded
+life than was the sudden, feverish courtship which rushed at
+express-train speed and clatter from the first introduction of two
+strangers to the final irrevocable words before the altar. Mrs.
+Brenton's own experience had taught her that acquaintance should come
+before one's marriage, not wait till after.
+
+All in all, the more she thought about it, Mrs. Brenton favoured
+Catie's somewhat premature announcement of her plans. Despite his
+heritage of sturdy parson blood, Mrs. Brenton confessed to herself that
+Scott might easily become a little erratic now and then, might let go
+his hold upon the one thing needful in order to gratify his curiosity
+concerning the touch of less essential, more alluring trifles. He
+needed the steady, sturdy influence of some one outside himself to keep
+him always in the beaten tracks. Already, for better or for worse,
+Catie's influence upon him was a strong one; stronger, Mrs. Brenton
+admitted to herself with a woful little sigh, than that of his own
+mother, despite the ill-concealed anxiety and the doting love that only
+a mother can give, and then only to an only son. Between the two of
+them, herself and Catie, Catie's will was the stronger law. Catie, if
+she chose, could keep Scott's feet well in the limits of the beaten
+trails. It should be her duty to impress on Catie's girlish mind that
+the beaten trail was the only one for him to follow, the path of
+expediency as well as the path of holiness; that complete contentment
+and success lay only at its other end.
+
+Accordingly, Mrs. Brenton took it upon her shoulders to play the part
+of Providence for those two young children: Scott and Catie. To Scott,
+she pointed out Catie as the girl best worth his attention and his
+comradeship, the while, with the other hand, she still held up before
+him the picture she had so long ago created, the picture of himself,
+child of the preaching race of Wheelers, proclaiming the gospel to all
+men and some heathen. Side by side she placed them: the world-given
+wife, the heaven-offered career. Moreover, she was so far the artist
+that she was able to shift her lights and shades to fall now upon the
+one and now upon the other, according as Scott's interest in one or
+other of them appeared to her to wane. Her quick-sighted mother love
+was prompt to warn her of that waning, prompt to make her understand
+that, to a boy like Scott, a hard and fast monotony would be fatal to
+almost any plan.
+
+With Catie, on the other hand, her course was altogether different,
+altogether simpler. With the constant and unwavering blows of a
+carpenter pounding a nail into an oaken plank, she pounded into Catie's
+mind the undeniable truths that Scott's ancestry alone was enough to
+fit him for the ministry; that the ministry, granted the sincerity of
+its orthodox convictions, may be the highest field of labour offered to
+any man. Moreover, to these palpable truths, she added others, a shade
+less undeniable. She impressed it on the mind of Catie that Scott's
+sole chance of happiness, in this life and the life to come, rested
+upon their combined ability to shield him from any adverse influence
+which might deflect his footsteps from his predestined goal. She
+impressed it on the mind of Catie, also, that it was her girlish duty
+to herd her immature companion into the proper fold; that her young and
+sprightly charms, her girlish loyalty should be to her as a shepherd's
+crook, the guiding wand to be applied in moments of extremest peril.
+
+After her lights, Mrs. Brenton was canny. If she only had been a little
+bit more worldly, she would have been a clever woman; moreover, her
+potential cleverness had never been one half so manifest as when she
+talked about all this to Catie. She did not put forward her urgings
+crudely, as for the sake of Scott, her son. Rather than that, she held
+them up to Catie coyly, as glimpses of opportunity and power which
+waited for her at the gateway of maturity: opportunity given only to
+the helpmeet of a man in the commanding position offered by his
+ministerial profession, power given to that helpmeet by reason of her
+position by his side.
+
+Like the conductor of an orchestra who draws out from one instrument
+and then another the varied themes of an overture, so Mrs. Brenton drew
+from the unlike minds of Catie and her son the selfsame and
+successive themes of what she, in her mother blindness, deemed the one
+possible and ennobling overture to Scott Brenton's life. It was quite
+characteristic of Mrs. Brenton's make-up, however, that she took no
+thought of Catie's life, save in so far as it could be applied to the
+ultimate development of Scott, her son.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+
+"A puffic' fibbous!" the monthly nurse had announced triumphantly, when
+she had presented Mrs. Opdyke's first-born son to his mother for her
+inspection.
+
+The phrase, and the smile which invariably accompanied it, were the
+main stock in trade of the monthly nurse. Upon these two items, she had
+based her popularity which now had endured for more than a dozen years
+of escorting over the threshold of this world the sons and daughters of
+"first families only," as her professional card insisted. To be sure,
+the constant employment of the phrase had robbed it of all critical
+significance. Indeed, it is very doubtful whether, even at the start of
+her career, the nurse had ever linked it in her mind with the great god
+Apollo. From some one of her predecessors, she had picked it up and
+found that it fitted well upon her tongue. Later, the "fibbouses"
+abounded more and more plenteously, as her clientage increased, and she
+applied the term indiscriminately, regardless whether the recipient
+were an Apollo, or a mere Diana.
+
+However, from the start, Reed Opdyke certainly deserved the phrase.
+Long generations of clean, high-minded living cannot fail to produce an
+effect upon their offspring. Reed's father had branched off from a line
+of lawyers to hold the chair of chemistry in one of the great colleges
+for girls. Reed's mother was of Pilgrim stock, well-nigh untainted by
+the blood of later, lesser arrivals on the Massachusetts shore. On
+either side of the house, it had been a matter of simple creed to hold
+one's body and one's mind equally aloof from possibilities of disease.
+Reed Opdyke's make-up showed the value of this creed.
+
+Not that he thought very much about it, however. He accepted as a
+matter of course his sanity, very much as he accepted most other things
+that came in his way. His loosely curled fists within his pockets, his
+head erect and his lips smiling, he went striding along through life,
+taking the best of it as his natural right, and letting the rest of it
+alone. From kindergarten into school and from school into college, the
+old, old road trodden by all his ancestors, he journeyed quite as a
+matter of course. In fact, it never struck him that any fellow could do
+otherwise; never, that is, until he met Scott Brenton.
+
+For Scott, in time, had also come to college. His mother had insisted
+upon that; had worked for it that it might in time be possible; had
+scrimped and toiled and saved, the while she had been training her only
+child to a strict economy which, however galling, he must accept as
+well worth the while for the sake of all that it was going to put
+within his grasp. Accordingly, Scott had been sent to school throughout
+the termtimes, sent well or ill, in good days and in bad. He had been
+goaded into an ambition which held him at the top of his small classes
+in the village school. When the top of the top class was reached, and
+college was still inaccessible, Mrs. Brenton had stiffened her sinews
+for yet greater toil and scrimping, and had sent her son up to Andover
+where the Wheeler name was a tradition, where the knowledge of Scott's
+ancestry would help him to find the employment that he needed. Scott's
+education was to be by no means easy of achievement. To gain his school
+diploma and his later degrees at college, he too must work, not alone
+at books, but, in his off-hours, at any task that offered.
+
+And Scott did work, too. Around him, other boys were going in for
+football, making records on the track team, getting occasional leaves
+to run in to Boston for an odd half-holiday. Then they came back,
+hilarious and triumphant, to discuss their experience at mealtimes,
+boasting, chaffing, wrangling merrily in the intimacy known to boyhood,
+the world over. They never thought to pay any especial attention to the
+other boy who brought them things to eat, a boy with luminous gray eyes
+and clothes which were in sore need of pressing. He was just "that
+waiter chap" and not a human being like themselves. They talked about
+their secret plans before him, with no more thought of his personality
+than as if he had been a concrete post. And, after listening to their
+chatter throughout a protracted mealtime, after seeing, as he could not
+fail to do, how he counted to them for absolutely nothing at all, Scott
+Brenton had his hours when he too doubted the fact of his own humanity.
+An active brain and an almost automatic body trained to supple service:
+these by themselves, he realized, do not go far towards making a human
+thing of life. Contacts are necessary for that, not total isolation;
+and contact was the one thing denied him. Now and then he had his hours
+of wishing that those other boys, boys whose talk was full of reference
+to unfamiliar ways of life: of wishing that they would treat him a
+little bit unkindly. Anything would be better than this absolute
+ignoring of his individuality.
+
+In his intervals of waiting on the table, he washed up the dishes. His
+meals he took, standing by the sink, a plate on the shelf before him,
+while he washed and chewed simultaneously. There were other tasks
+besides, tasks all of them more or less menial, all of them adding to
+the general drain upon his nerves and body. The rest of the time, his
+studies kept him busy. Indeed, it was no small wonder that he was able
+to maintain a decent footing in his class, so fagged out and weary was
+he by the time he had a moment's leisure to prepare his next-day's
+lessons. But prepare them he did, and well, although his eyes grew
+heavy over the task and ached with the strain of working by the one dim
+light with which his shabby garret room was equipped. It was a single
+room, unhappily. Even there, all contact was denied him. Saint Simon,
+sitting alone upon his pillar and gazing down upon his fellow men, was
+no more solitary than was Scott Brenton. Moreover, Saint Simon had the
+final consolation of being quite aware that he was looking down, a
+consolation which, to Scott Brenton, was permanently refused.
+
+And then, Andover done, there came college, not one of the small
+colleges where individual idiosyncrasies count so much in making up the
+estimate of the student's character; but a great university, so great
+that it can stop to measure no man by any one trait or any several
+traits, so busy that it must grasp him in the round, or not at all.
+There lay the fact of Scott Brenton's ultimate salvation. He would have
+been downed completely, judged by the finical standards of the little
+college.
+
+It was in his choice of college that, for the first time in his life,
+Scott Brenton's will had become dominant. His mother would fain have
+had it otherwise. The Wheelers, one and all, had been little-college
+men. The tradition was in their blood, and she had inherited it to the
+full: the strange belief that the smaller college offers less
+temptation to go astray; the equally strange belief that the closer
+contact with a few professors can quite atone for the lack of friction
+against a great crowd of fellow students, alien to one another in
+habits of mind and body, yet all of them, swiftly or sluggishly as may
+be, moving towards the selfsame goal. It had seemed to Mrs. Brenton
+something bordering on the blasphemous when Scott had endeavoured to
+put this latter phase of the question before her. Realizing his own
+futility upon that score, he finally had changed his tactics and
+assured her that, as far as money-earning work went, there were ten
+chances in the great college to one in the small.
+
+And Scott was right, albeit his argument was wholly superficial. The
+truth of the matter was that his Andover experience had left him sore
+and downhearted; that he knew, in the bottom of his boyish soul, that
+he must plunge beyond his depth and swim into a wider sea, or else go
+down entirely, pushed out of sight beneath the overlapping circles of
+the little cliques, all too self-centred to admit of any common focus.
+
+Mrs. Brenton did not care at all about any common focus. The phrase
+"college spirit" sounded intemperate, and she would have been the last
+person in the world to agree to the belief that Scott could gain any
+education from contact with boys of his own age. To her mind, one fusty
+old professor out-valued one hundred eager undergraduates, as source of
+inspiration to the young. Education, to her mind, lay in the desk-end
+of the classroom; it was unthinkable to her that Scott had lost the
+best of Andover, by reason of his solitary life there. As for college,
+the students, all but Scott, were bound to be full of the wiles of the
+devil. Scott's safety lay in his books, and in his keeping too busy in
+his off-hours to have time to get into mischief.
+
+Moreover, the purely practical end of the keeping busy was beginning to
+loom large upon Mrs. Brenton's horizon. More and more she was coming to
+realize that it is no small undertaking for any widow with an almost
+imperceptible income to put a son through college. Valiantly she toiled
+and scrimped; but it was becoming increasingly necessary for Scott to
+help her out in both the toiling and the scrimping. Accordingly, the
+creases deepened, both vertically about the corners of Scott's lips and
+horizontally across his shiny knees and shoulder blades. His eyes,
+though, grew more luminous, as time went on, perhaps because they were
+surrounded by ever deepening hollows.
+
+It was those eyes that first caught the attention of Reed Opdyke.
+Midway in his sophomore year, Opdyke, with a dozen others of his kind,
+had revolted from the monotony of the commons table, and had set up a
+so-called joint of their own, an eating-club presided over by a gaunt
+and self-helping senior, and served by a quartette of cadaverous and
+self-helping sophomores among whom was Scott Brenton.
+
+Reed Opdyke was a busy youngster, full of the countless interests that
+cram the college days of a popular, easy-going student. Also he was a
+potential leader of men, who gave himself leisure to study the people
+with whom he came into any kind of contact, to sort them out and
+classify them according to their possibilities as they unveiled
+themselves to his boyish eyes. Three of the cadaverous sophomores he
+dismissed with a glance. They were impossible. They lacked all
+spiritual yeast and, to the end of time, they would be waiters in one
+sense or another. Scott Brenton was different. A fellow with those eyes
+must have it in him to count for something, some day. Lounging in his
+seat at table, Opdyke kept his eye on Scott, talked at him, then talked
+to him; and then, obedient to some boyish whim or other, a few days
+later, the meal ended, he took him by the elbow and walked him off to
+Mory's for a second supper.
+
+Mrs. Brenton, on her knees beside her bed, that night, prayed long and
+fervently and with full particulars concerning the education of her
+son. Her heart would have frozen with horror, had she seen the
+smoke-filled room where her son was sitting, with Reed Opdyke across
+the table from him. Her hopes for his future would have shrivelled into
+naught, could she have realized that, over that very table, her son,
+her Scott, was to receive a lesson, new and quite unforgettable. One
+hour of jovial human comradeship had opened Scott Brenton's eyes to
+more things than he ever yet had dreamed of. It had taught him once for
+all that irresponsible, carefree youth is not, of necessity, vicious.
+
+As the days and the weeks ran on, the comradeship increased. Measured
+by the days of Opdyke, overflowing full of interests, it took the
+smallest possible share of time: a look of comprehension, a word of
+casual greeting, and, on rare occasions, a bit of a walk together when
+their ways chanced to coincide. Still more occasionally, a stray hour
+was spent at Mory's, or in Opdyke's room in Lawrence. As yet, a boyish
+delicacy had kept Opdyke from seeking to invade what he knew could not
+fail to be the barrenness of Scott Brenton's quarters.
+
+Slight as was their intercourse, viewed in Opdyke's eyes, to Scott it
+filled the whole horizon, the one near and vital fact which broke in
+upon its emptiness and cut away the barren wastes about him. He lived
+alternately upon the memory of Opdyke as he had seen him last, and upon
+the anticipations of their next meeting. His hours of table service,
+ceasing to be wearisome, had become veritable social functions, for was
+there not always the chance of a random word and smile? Those failing,
+there was always the pleasure of watching Opdyke, now lounging lazily
+in his seat and mocking at his fellows, now bending forward above the
+table, heedless of his cooling plate, the while he harangued his
+companions with a facility which seemed to Scott the acme of brilliant
+eloquence.
+
+At Reed's elbow, Scott followed each inflection of the persuasive
+voice, his lean face glowing with appreciation at every point his idol
+scored. For the time being, awkwardness was lost and all
+self-consciousness. Why think about himself, when he could have the
+chance to watch Reed Opdyke and to listen to him? Scott's nature
+thrilled in answer to the alien touch, unconsciously as that touch was
+given. It never once would have struck Opdyke that he was becoming an
+object of idolatry to this gaunt starveling to whom, as he expressed
+it, he had tried to be a little decent. It was quite within the limits
+of his comprehension that he could step down now and then to Scott. It
+never would have occurred to him, at that epoch of his experience, that
+Scott could try to clamber up to him. Save for the minutes when he
+consciously gave his attention to the ungainly young waiter, he
+disregarded him completely.
+
+The other boys, however, were quick to take in the situation and to
+comment on it. "Reed's parson" they called Scott, and they chaffed
+Opdyke mercilessly, when Scott's back was turned. Scott, had he heard
+the chaff, would have been wounded to the death, a death he would have
+met far, far inside his shell, regretful that ever he had come out of
+it. Opdyke, however, merely laughed and stuck to his original position.
+
+"A fellow with such eyes is bound to have it in him. He's never had a
+chance," he said to his chaffing mates. "Wait till he finds himself,
+and then see what happens."
+
+"Nothing," came the prompt reply. "He won't ever find himself, Reed. He
+has found you, and that's as much as such a fellow as he is, can ever
+assimilate."
+
+And the reply was by no means wide of the mark. For the present, Scott
+Brenton was finding it all he could do to assimilate Reed Opdyke.
+Indeed, it was only in the very end of all things that fulness of
+assimilation came.
+
+As the time went on, partly in defiance of the chaffing of his chronies,
+partly on account of it, Opdyke lent himself more and more to the
+assimilating process. He sought out Scott more often, had him in his
+room, taught him to fill a pipe and smoke it after the fashion of a
+gentleman, dropped into his ears specious hints regarding manners, and
+about the efficiency of one's mattress as frugal substitute for a
+tailor's pressboard. To be sure, upon that latter count Scott took him
+with unforeseen literalness; and, in his zeal to carry out his teacher's
+dictum, subjected his coat to the mattress treatment, as well as his
+more simply-outlined nether garments. Moreover, it should be set down
+as distinctly to Opdyke's credit that he suppressed his merriment, the
+next time he saw the coat upon Scott Brenton's shoulders.
+
+Just at this epoch, some waggish member of the eating club employed his
+camera at their expense. The resultant film, in after weeks, became one
+of the most popular assets of the class. True, the needful haste had
+caused the camera to tip a little. None the less, what the picture
+lacked in composition, it made up in clearness and in vitality. Taken
+solely as a study of contrasting types, it was of no small sociological
+value, since it proved past all gainsaying that the absolute democracy
+of a great college can bring into close relationship the most
+impossibly divergent natures.
+
+Scott, at this time, was thin and lean. His shoulders were bowed a
+little with the strain of unceasing work and worry; in his more
+self-conscious moments, he shambled when he walked. Only moderately
+tall, clothed in ill-cut garments which he wore as uneasily as
+possible, his immature young figure was not one to call out much
+admiration on the score of its virility. Indeed, the one really virile
+thing about Scott Brenton was his hair, which sprang out strongly from
+his scalp, fine, but thick and just a little wavy where it lay across
+his crown. His head was well-shaped, only that it was a bit too high
+above the ears, the brow a bit too salient; the eyes alone, though, at
+that time, redeemed from hopeless mediocrity his worn, ill-nourished
+face. Beside his hips, his hands dangled limply, showing a stretch of
+unclothed wrist sticking out below the shrunken coat sleeves.
+
+Beside him in the picture, Reed Opdyke strode lightly, still, to all
+seeming, the "puffic' fibbous" that his nurse had dubbed him. Six feet
+tall, lean and supple as a deerhound and as totally unconscious of his
+long, slim body, it was impossible to fancy him as ever being betrayed
+into an awkward motion. Above his straight, slim shoulders, his curly
+brown head rose proudly, his thin lips smiled a greeting to all the
+world around him, his brown eyes looked straight and true into the eyes
+of every man he chanced to meet. Only his sense of humour and his
+comfortable smattering of original sin could have saved Reed Opdyke
+from being insupportable. Beauty like his, albeit manly, is bound to be
+a certain handicap.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+
+It was to Reed Opdyke's influence that Scott owed the encouraging
+plaudits of his chemistry professor.
+
+In an elective system which, at that time, was still left quite
+unmodified, Scott had happened upon the chemistry class by way of
+filling up his courses for his sophomore year. He had been going on
+with it indifferently for some months, when Opdyke had been transferred
+to his division. Up to that time, Scott had liked the class but
+temperately; that is, although it had seemed to him a useless frill
+upon the garment of his education, he did not dislike it in the least,
+and he had made a fair showing in his recitations.
+
+Opdyke's coming into his division had changed all that. At first, Scott
+merely had been possessed by a fury of desire to shine before his
+idol's eyes. A little later on, Opdyke's manifest, albeit rather
+casual, interest in the subject had led Scott to revise his earlier
+notions carefully, to decide that there might be something in it, after
+all. By the beginning of his junior year, Scott had won the tardy
+attention of the head of the department. By the beginning of the
+Christmas holidays of that junior year, the head of the department had
+felt it his plain duty to explain to Scott that the road ahead of him
+was likely to be an open one and easy. If he kept on as he had begun,
+in time he might be head of a department on his own account. Absurd for
+a fellow with a mind like his to be spending his time over rhetoric and
+the classics! Science was his line, pure science; above all, chemistry.
+
+And Scott had listened in silence, at first too much astounded by the
+unexpected verdict to make answer. Then, as the head of the department
+left off predicting and fell to making plans, Scott plucked up courage
+to tell of the ministerial career supposedly ahead of him. The
+professor, downright and enthusiastic in his utterances, pooh-poohed
+the entire ministerial idea. Nonsense! Absurd! Spoil a chemist to make
+a parson! Preposterous! Any one could preach, if he tried. Not one man
+in a dozen could even make a quantitative analysis tally up, and get
+anywhere near as much material out of it as went in. Waste on
+flourishing gestures those lithe hands that were so obviously created
+for the manipulation of such delicate things as balances and test-tubes
+and the like! It was impossible. Scott must take the other idea home
+with him and think it over carefully, during the coming holidays.
+
+And Scott did take the idea home with him; but, from the first, he
+found it out of the question to think it over carefully. How could he,
+when, within himself, he knew that his feeling for the profession laid
+down before him by ancestral tradition and by his mother's constant
+urgings: that his feeling for the ministry was a perfunctory affection,
+a wholly different matter from the passionate desire that throbbed
+within him at the thought of giving up his life to scientific study. To
+preach ancient beliefs that no human power could verify, or to work on
+steadily, helping to broaden the field of truth, and proving all things
+as he went along: these were the alternatives. Obviously there could be
+no comparison between them.
+
+Scott took the idea home with him, as Professor Mansfield had advised
+him. All those first days at home, he hugged the idea tight, tight,
+caressed it, gloated over it in secret, but allowed no one, not even
+Catie, to share it with him. Before he went back again to college, he
+would show it to his mother, would allow her to share his ecstasy at
+the new opportunity opened out before him. Not yet, however. For the
+first time in all his life, Scott Brenton was seriously in love. He
+gave to this new vision a fervent passion such as Catie had been
+powerless to arouse; like all young lovers, he desired a little time to
+revel in secret over the mere fact that he knew he was in love.
+
+Of his mother's consent to the change of plan, Scott Brenton felt no
+doubt. Little by little, with his growth towards manhood, Scott had
+come to dominate his mother more than either of them realized. His very
+repression, his subordination in all his other relationships, helped
+towards this end. It was but a natural reaction from his servile
+position when away from home that, once more at home, he should assert
+himself as potential master of the house. His virile will was dormant,
+crushed, but it was by no means dead. And his mother, adoring him and
+idealizing him despite her maternal qualms on his account, yielded
+herself readily enough to his domination. And then, all at once, her
+yielding came to a sudden end against the bed rock of her character.
+Her own ambition, Scott's ultimate salvation, alike forbade him to
+renounce his ministerial career.
+
+After all, though, it was one of the pitched battles that settle
+themselves without the final appeal to arms. On that winter night when
+Scott had come in, buoyantly alive and hopeful, to be met upon the
+threshold by his mother's prayer, the boy had realized that the fight
+was on. Next morning, over the plate of sausages, the crisis came, and
+went. Contrary to all his expectations, Scott left the table
+vanquished, his light of hope gone out for ever. It was a meagre
+consolation that, in thinking back upon the matter afterwards, he could
+take to himself the credit of having spoken no word which could ever
+fester in his mother's mind.
+
+He had gone up to his room to lock the door and then to stand long at
+the window, staring with unseeing eyes down into the village street. By
+good rights, he should have seen one future, if not the other, opening
+out before him in ever-widening vistas. At nineteen or so, however, one
+is not too imaginative. Scott merely saw a vagrant dog trying to paw
+his way through a deep drift that lay across the road. He had a fellow
+feeling for the dog, when he gave up his effort and, sitting down in
+the ruins of his tunnel, abandoned himself to the contemplation of a
+flea.
+
+After a while, he gave up his moody drumming on the pane, turned his
+back to the bleak perspective and, seizing his hat, departed in search
+of Catie. He found Catie mending a tear in the new frock she had worn,
+the night before, and unsympathetic in proportion to her discontent.
+The hollowness of the world was all about him, when he went back to
+college, three days later.
+
+His first intention had been to throw over all his scientific study
+once for all. Forbidden the whole loaf, why whet his appetite by
+nibbling at the one slice offered him? His common sense, however, aided
+by the urging of Professor Mansfield, restored him to his reason. Scott
+had lost no time at all in making a clean breast of the matter to
+Professor Mansfield: his mother's dreams for him, her prejudices, his
+own choice and his renouncing of it all for the sake of what his mother
+had already given up for him. To his colleagues, the old professor
+expressed himself with plain profanity. To Scott, he took a gentler
+tone, spoke with appreciation of a mother such as Mrs. Brenton must be,
+spoke of the ministerial profession with an admiration he was far from
+feeling, and then craftily suggested to his favourite student that the
+preaching of the gospel should go hand in hand with scientific truth.
+In these modern days, a clergyman should be fully abreast of scientific
+thought. Best keep on with his chemistry. It might be useful to him,
+later on. Even eternal brimstone was susceptible of analysis.
+
+Then, an instant later, the old professor could have bitten out his
+tongue for his unholy jest. His penitence was in no wise lessened by
+the quality of Scott's answering laugh. Best leave those fellows to
+their ministerial sackcloth, without questioning the quality of the
+flax from which it was spun. A man of Scott Brenton's calibre would do
+no harm by his preaching. What was the sense of seeking to upset any
+orthodox beliefs he might happen to have inherited? Besides, as long as
+Scott kept up his sciences, he was reasonably sure of keeping up his
+common sense and, what was a long way more important, his perspective
+and his sense of fun.
+
+Despite his disappointed resolutions to dismiss the boy from his mind,
+the old professor, going his chemical way, worried about Scott. It
+seemed to him, according to his bald phrasing, to be a cruel waste of
+good material to make a parson out of what might have been a great
+explorer, for, to Professor Mansfield's mind, the incomplete and
+lengthening list of elements was just as reasonable a field for
+exploration as was the Antarctic Continent, or Darkest Africa. The
+results, indeed, of such exploration were bound to be a great deal the
+more useful. The professor worried. In time, he laid his worries on the
+dinner table before Reed Opdyke whose father had been a classmate of
+his own.
+
+"It's an awful shame about young Brenton," he observed, when he and
+Opdyke and the tobacco had been left to themselves.
+
+"What about him?" Opdyke questioned carelessly, as he picked up a
+match.
+
+"That he has talents of his own, and a conscience that belongs to his
+mother. I believe in mothers, Reed; yours is a wonderful woman. But, in
+this case, I doubt the wonder, and I deplore the way she keeps her
+thumb on Brenton."
+
+"You think she does?"
+
+"I know it. Her confounded theories of sanctity are putting a binding
+around all his brain, a tight binding that is going to shrink and cause
+a pucker. Brenton has a first-class scientific mind, granted it gets
+the training. Left to himself and the divinity school, he'll turn into
+a perfect ass as preacher."
+
+Opdyke shook his head.
+
+"Nothing so possible as that, I'm afraid," he contradicted. "He'll just
+settle down on his heels, and shuffle along in----" He hesitated for a
+finish of his phrase.
+
+The professor supplied it, and ruthlessly.
+
+"Mental carpet slippers. Precisely. And I could give him boots and
+spurs."
+
+"Why don't you do it, then?" Opdyke asked him bluntly.
+
+In the interest of the subject, the old professor forgot that he was
+talking to one of his students and about another.
+
+"Because he's got the very devil of a conscience, and won't let me.
+There is a widowed mother in the background, and a perfect retinue of
+preaching ancestors, whole dozens of them and all Baptists, and they
+have conspired to poison the boy's mind with the notion that it's up to
+him to preach, too. It would be all right, if he had anything to say;
+but he hasn't. He's tongue-tied and unmagnetic at the best; what's
+more, he has learned too many things to let him flaunt abroad the old
+beliefs as battle standards. He's gone too far, and not far enough. His
+life is bound to be a miserable sort of compromise, a species of
+battledore and shuttlecock arrangement between the limits of the deep
+sea and the devil." And then the professor pulled himself up short.
+"Know him?" he queried curtly, as he lit his match.
+
+Opdyke nodded.
+
+"As one does know people one never meets out anywhere," he said.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" The question was still curt.
+
+"He waits at my joint."
+
+"Of course. And?"
+
+Opdyke laughed.
+
+"How do you know there is an _and_, Professor?" he asked easily.
+
+"Because I know you, and because I've heard of 'Reed's parson.' You're
+your father's own son, Reed. You never could get a starveling like
+Scott Brenton out of sight of your conscience. How much have you seen
+of him?"
+
+"Not much." And Opdyke gave a few details.
+
+The professor nodded thoughtfully. Then,--
+
+"See more," he ordered; "any amount more. You have time enough, you
+lazy young sinner, and I'll be answerable for all the consequences."
+
+Opdyke yielded to his curiosity.
+
+"What kind of consequences?"
+
+"The inevitable kind that follow all you youngsters. Listen, boy.
+Brenton is a mixture of genius, and prig, and ignorant young hermit;
+or, rather, he has the elements all inside him, ready to be mixed.
+You'll have to do the mixing."
+
+"I?" Opdyke looked startled. "Professor, what a beast of a bore!"
+
+"No matter if it is. I believe in the conservation of all latent
+energy. Brenton's is all latent, and I count on you to do the
+conserving. I've been asking questions lately. From all accounts, you
+are the only man in college but myself who has taken the pains to get
+inside the poor beggar's shell."
+
+"Hm. Well?" Opdyke's eyes were on the smoke in front of him; but, to
+the older man, it was plain that he was listening intently.
+
+"Now you've got to go to work to get him out of his shell, so that
+people can see what he is like and, more than that, so that he can find
+out what people really are. He has no more knowledge of humanity than a
+six-months puppy; in fact, he hasn't so much. And--he's--got--to--learn."
+The words came weightily.
+
+"What's the good?" Opdyke asked lazily.
+
+The reply was unexpected, even to him who knew Professor Mansfield's
+downright ways.
+
+"To teach him what an ass he really is. Till he finds that out--till
+you all find it out about yourselves, there's not much hope for any of
+you."
+
+Opdyke flushed.
+
+"Thanks," he said a little shortly.
+
+Bending across the table, the old professor laid a friendly hand upon
+his arm.
+
+"Don't be huffy, Reed. A few of you take in the knowledge with your
+mother's milk. That's what saves society, by marking it off into
+separate classes, what makes the difference between your father's son,
+and the strenuous scion of fifty ministerial Wheelers. But, because
+you've already got it, you owe all the more to the poor chaps who
+haven't."
+
+"Yes, sir." Opdyke's reply came with dutiful promptness, although it
+was plain to the professor that he had flown quite beyond the limits of
+the young mind before him. "What do you want me to do with him,
+though?"
+
+The professor's eyes twinkled, as he dragged himself back to the
+practical aspects of the case.
+
+"Coax him out of his shell. If he won't come, then haul him out by the
+ears. Have him in your room and have some other men in there to meet
+him. Take him about with you. Take him to Mory's, on a thick night
+there. Show him life, the way you know it. If you must, show him an
+occasional siren. I can say this to you, Reed, because I have taken
+pains to find out that your sirens are pretty decent ones, cleaner than
+most of them. To sum it up, let Scott Brenton see life as you are
+living it, not as he imagines it from the point of view of the man who
+never can do anything but sit back in a corner and look on."
+
+Opdyke filled his pipe anew, puffed at it silently, then spoke.
+
+"Beastly tantalizing thing to do," he said. "What in thunder is the
+use?"
+
+The professor spoke with sudden fervour.
+
+"Much!" he said. "At least, it will teach him, when he's preaching for
+the Lord, to remember that Mammon isn't always quite so black as he is
+painted."
+
+And so, on top of Reed Opdyke's other interests, Professor Mansfield
+laid the burden of Scott Brenton's worldly training. In pointing out
+the need of it to Opdyke, however, the old professor had been by no
+means as downright as he seemed. From above his lecture notes and his
+blowpipes, he kept keen eyes upon the members of his classes. Watching
+Scott steadily, in those days which followed upon the boy's bitter
+disappointment, he had seen new lines graving themselves about his
+lips, lines of decision now, not of worried mal-nutrition, lines that
+too easily might shape themselves to wilfulness. Scott, recluse that he
+had been, had also been as steady as a deacon; but the old professor
+realized that a reaction might come at almost any instant. One outlet,
+and that the highest one, forbidden him, he might seek other, lower
+ones in sheer bravado. Forbidden to climb into the Tree of Knowledge of
+all Good, he might, in revenge, fall greedily upon the Apples of Sodom.
+Left to himself, no one knew what harpies he might chance upon as
+comrades, nor what sights they might show him. To prevent all that, to
+provide him with an outlet which should be as wholesome as it was fresh
+and sparkling, the professor had given him into the safe hands of Reed
+Opdyke. It was as he said: he was quite well aware that, although Reed
+had his sirens, they all were curiously clean ones; in short, that his
+young Mammon was nobler far than many a senile God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+
+As a matter of course, Catie came to Scott's commencement. Had she
+answered sincerely to any questions put to her, she would have
+confessed to a two-fold purpose: the showing off of her proprietorship
+in Scott, and the showing off of her pair of new frocks, the most
+elaborate achievements as yet attempted by the village dressmaker. It
+must be confessed, however, that Catie found both of these deeds a
+little disillusioning. Scott was so busy in so many ways that he seemed
+to Catie to spare her only the smaller fragments of his time; and her
+two new gowns, which at home had been tried on amid the plaudits of the
+girl friends bidden to the private view, sank into insignificance
+beside the round dozen or more frocks which each of the other
+commencement guests was wearing in bewildering succession. To be sure,
+Catie's gowns had the most trimming on them; but her satisfaction in
+that fact was somewhat modified by the discovery that all her trimming
+was running the wrong way.
+
+Nevertheless, Catie enjoyed some happy hours, despite the chilling
+disappointment of finding her frocks inadequate. It would have been
+nicer, of course, not to discover too late that she lacked the proper
+gown for any especial function; nicer to have seen herself, as she saw
+some other girls, girls not nearly so pretty as herself, attended, not
+by one swain only, but surrounded by a laughing, eager dozen. Still,
+there were compensations, chaperons among them. Catie's expressed
+regrets were wholly perfunctory, whenever Mrs. Brenton confessed that
+she was tired and needed to lie down.
+
+For Mrs. Brenton also had come to Scott's commencement which, to her
+mind, was the crowning event of her own lifetime. Not only that, but
+somehow or other she had squeezed out the money to buy herself a new
+black silk gown, the first one since her marriage, more than twenty
+years before. Moreover, in deference to the prevailing styles, she
+explained to Scott on her way up from the station, she had had it made
+to hook up in the back above a little black lace tucker. Scott, as a
+matter of course, did not know a tucker from a turnip. None the less,
+he nodded his approval. That same evening, he confessed to himself a
+moderate degree of pride, when he introduced Reed Opdyke to his mother.
+Mrs. Brenton might lack certain social frills and furbelows; but no one
+could look into her honest face above the trim little black lace
+tucker, without realizing that she was of good, old-fashioned stock
+which never would degenerate. No one but a lady born could take herself
+so simply. Scott read Opdyke's approval in his eyes, the while he
+himself stood apart and talked to Catie.
+
+It was when young Opdyke's eyes passed on to rest on Catie, though,
+that Scott felt certain doubts, lately risen up within him, crystallize
+and solidify past all gainsaying. Outwardly, Opdyke's manner was
+respect itself; but there was an odd little twinkle in his eyes, as he
+gazed down on the top of Catie's flower-strewn hat, now tipped
+coquettishly askew as the girl turned her head sidewise and upward to
+speak to her tall companion. Catie was pretty, of course; but was she
+quite--well--right? Were her manners, like the cut and colour of her
+garments, a thought too pronounced and noticeable? Was her voice a
+little bit too loud, her manner too assured? Or was it that those other
+girls beside her elbow were effete and colourless? Scott struggled to
+repress his doubts, while he watched the gay assurance with which Catie
+answered to Reed Opdyke's chaff. Scott was perfectly well aware that
+Opdyke would not have chaffed some of those other girls upon such short
+acquaintance, and the surety made him restless. He took it out in
+wishing that Catie had not adorned her girlish neck with a gilded chain
+which could have restrained a bulldog, or a convict.
+
+Then he pulled himself up short. Catie was Catie, and his guest. She
+would have fought for him on any issue, and downed any number of foes
+in the fighting. To Mrs. Brenton, she was as dear as any daughter, dear
+as the daughter that she meant one day to be. Besides, who was he, a
+self-help student temporarily excused from waiting upon table and
+attired in a misfit evening coat hired from a ghetto tailor: who was he
+to criticise the flowers and frills of Catie? If she had had the
+chances which had come to him, if she could have gone to Smith, for
+instance, or Bryn Mawr, she would have come out of the mill a finished
+little product, clever, adaptable, and not a gawky, under-nourished,
+over-strenuous bumpkin like himself. In the depths of his
+self-abasement, Scott Brenton did not hesitate to ply himself with ugly
+adjectives. Indeed, they seemed to him to be doing something towards
+the removal of his doubts concerning Catie's pinchbeck chain.
+
+Later, as it chanced, Reed Opdyke and Scott Brenton found themselves
+going up the street together.
+
+"It's all hours, I suppose," Opdyke said rather indistinctly through a
+mammoth yawn. "Still, Brenton, what if it is? Come along to Mory's."
+
+"Too late," Scott objected, with a guilty recollection of his mother
+who would have wrestled in prayer, all night long, could she have seen
+her son's steps turn towards Mory's and at the bacchanalian hour of
+half-past ten.
+
+But Opdyke's hand was on his watch.
+
+"Not a bit. Besides, it's our last chance, you know."
+
+"Till next year," Scott corrected, though he yielded to the hand upon
+his arm.
+
+Opdyke shook his head.
+
+"No next year about it, Brenton. That's all off."
+
+"What now?" Scott asked him in some surprise, for it had been an
+understood thing that Opdyke took his graduate science courses in the
+university that was giving him his bachelor's degree.
+
+"The ancestral crank has slipped a cog," Opdyke returned profanely.
+"Being interpreted, my reverend sire thinks I'd do better work at the
+School of Mines and then in Europe. I'm sorry, too, confound it, even
+if I know his head is level. I'd been looking forward to the pleasure
+of romping along here for another year or two, and watching you get
+changed into a parson. It would have been well worth my while, too. It
+isn't every sinner like myself that has the chance to see a saint in
+the making. I should have found it an edifying spectacle." Then
+suddenly he broke off, and spoke with obvious sincerity. "Hang it all,
+Scott! What's the use? Chuck theology, and come along with me and be
+some sort of an engineer, or else the chemist old Mansfield has set his
+heart on making out of you."
+
+As he spoke, his hand tightened on Scott's arm. Under the street light
+beside them, he could see the colour rush into the face of his
+companion, as if in answer to the touch and the appeal; could see the
+thin lips waver, then set themselves into a stern, hard line. Then,--
+
+"It would break my mother's heart," Scott said gravely.
+
+Instantly Opdyke flung up his head and relaxed the pressure of his
+hand.
+
+"Then--last call for science!" he said, with a carelessness which did
+not quite ring true. "Your mother is worth the sacrifice, Brenton. I
+saw that for myself, to-night."
+
+It was not until they were settled at an initial-hacked table in the
+smoke-thick air of Mory's that either of them spoke again. Then it was
+Opdyke who broke the silence.
+
+"Who's the girl, Brenton? Your Book of Chronicles hasn't mentioned her,
+so far as I know."
+
+"She's----" Scott hesitated, a little at a loss as to the proper way of
+cataloguing Catie.
+
+Opdyke nodded at the hesitation.
+
+"Ja. I comprehend. Well, she's a pretty thing, and she knows her good
+points," he answered. "That counts a lot, too, in a girl like that."
+
+Scott turned on him a little bit pugnaciously, the more so by reason of
+his own doubts of an hour before.
+
+"Like what?" he queried curtly.
+
+However, Opdyke had no idea of being betrayed into any indiscretion.
+
+"Like her," he made tranquil answer, and then he bent above his glass
+of beer and blew aside the froth. "She is sure to arrive," he went on,
+after a minute. "The only thing I question is whether you may not have
+to hustle a good deal, to keep up with her. You're a born student,
+Brenton, and a sanctimonious grind. Nevertheless, when it comes to the
+worldly question of arriving, you're a confoundedly lazy lubber, and I
+suspect you always will be."
+
+Commencement over, and the intervening summer, Scott Brenton set
+himself to work to try to prove the falsity of Opdyke's words, by way
+of the divinity school. Moreover, as in the case of Opdyke, although in
+a wholly different sense, the parental plans for Scott had slipped a
+cog. He also left the university behind him, and went elsewhere in
+search of his professional degree. The change of plan, however, did not
+achieve itself without some tears and many lamentations upon the part
+of Mrs. Brenton. In carrying out her wishes that Scott should preach
+the gospel to the heathen, it never had occurred to her that he could
+preach any but the most azure forms of ultra-Calvinism. A sudden fading
+in the dye of his theology well-nigh destroyed all of her pleasure in
+his preaching.
+
+The change in tint had come, to all appearing, during the summer that
+had followed his bachelor's degree. How far, however, the stability of
+the dyes had been affected by Scott's previous experiments in Professor
+Mansfield's laboratory, it would be hard to say. It is quite within the
+limits of scientific possibility that certain chemical changes might
+have been taking place for many months, changes so slight and so slow
+as to have escaped the notice of Scott or any of his friends who
+chanced to feel an interest in the soundness of his theology. Doubtless
+the change was there, potential, its elements held in suspension and
+only waiting for the final molecule to arrive and start precipitation.
+
+The molecule arrived, that summer, in the person of a curly-haired
+young expounder of the Nicene Creed who came to spend July and August
+at the mountain inn where Scott, after the fashion of needy students
+New England over, was alternately engaged in keeping the books and
+sorting up the mail. It was by way of this latter function that Scott
+first came to be on speaking terms with the youthful rector of
+Saint-Luke-the-Good-Physician's. And the rector, despite his four
+hyphens and the gold cross that dangled on the front of his
+ecclesiastical waistcoat, was an honest, unspoiled boy who was quick to
+realize the curious appeal in the loneliness of Scott, to realize it
+and to answer to it.
+
+The early steps of their acquaintance were limited to the daily handing
+out the letters, the daily thankful accepting them. Then, one morning,
+Scott so far forgot his official and personal manners as to comment
+upon the familiar imprint of one of the envelopes, as it was changing
+hands. He made instant apology; but his penitence was forgotten in the
+discovery that the curly-headed divine was also an old student of
+Professor Mansfield. The rest of the steps were logical and
+consecutive, down to those final days of August when together,
+hard-working, would-be student and holiday-making, prosperous divine,
+they spent Scott's leisure hours afield, talking, talking, talking of
+the things one only mentions to one's spiritual next of kin.
+
+Before he left the mountains, Scott's mind was made up definitely to
+the step which was next before him. He knew that step would grieve his
+mother, would well-nigh break her heart. None the less, he was resolved
+to take it. Indeed, in honour, it seemed to him no other course was
+open to him, albeit, in his more downright moments, he realized that
+the taking it was nothing in the world but a miserable sort of
+compromise between his mother's wishes and his own. He had given her
+his word that he would be a preacher; keep his given word he must and
+would. Nevertheless, preaching, he must choose for himself a gentler
+sort of gospel than the lurid, flaming fires delighted in and set forth
+with all the cunning of word imagery, by every Parson Wheeler of his
+line. His God should be an honest gentleman, and not an all-pursuing
+Thing of Wrath.
+
+For some reason he would have been loath to analyze, even to himself,
+it was to Catie that Scott first announced his change of plan. Catie
+took the announcement tranquilly. To her mind, religion was something
+that one put on, together with one's Sunday hat. There was no reason
+one of them should be unchanging in form more than the other. One's
+theology, like one's brims, should broaden with the fashion; the forms
+of worship might as well grow high as the outline of one's hat-crown.
+Given the three main elements of best clothes, a Sunday on which to
+wear them and an appreciative church to wear them in, and Catie asked
+no further consolations of religion. The tolerance Scott liked,
+although he deplored the cause.
+
+"Lovely, Scott!" Catie said, with some enthusiasm, when at last she had
+grasped in its entirety, not Scott's idea, but the outward form in
+which it clothed itself. "You'll wear a surplice, then, and a purple
+stripe around your neck, and sing the prayers, like the man I saw in
+Boston. He had candles, too, burning at the back, beside a great brass
+cross."
+
+Scott shook his head in swift negation. As yet, the higher forms of
+ritualism were totally unknown to him.
+
+"That's Catholic, Catie," he reminded her. "Of course, I sha'n't do
+that."
+
+"No; 'twas Episcopal," she contradicted. "It said so, on a sign beside
+the door. But, Scott, that makes me think--"
+
+"Well?" he asked, wondering at her hesitation.
+
+"Would you mind very much," she came forward to his side and fell to
+fingering the top button of his coat caressingly; "would you mind it so
+very much not to call me Catie any more?"
+
+Absorbed as he was in his theological transference, he had felt sure
+that her request was on that selfsame theme, the more so, even, by
+reason of her unwonted hesitation. In his extreme surprise, he laughed
+a little at her question.
+
+"Why not, Catie?"
+
+She held up a forefinger of arch admonition.
+
+"There you go again!" she told him, with mock petulance. "Do listen to
+me, Scott. You're so interested in your everlasting old churches that
+you haven't an idea to spare for me. I want you to promise that you
+won't ever call me Catie any more."
+
+"But why? What shall I call you?" he inquired, with masculine and dazed
+bluntness.
+
+"Catia. It is ever so much prettier; Catie is so babyish," she urged
+him.
+
+"But, if it is your name?" he urged in return.
+
+Her retort came with unexpected pith and promptness. Moreover, it
+struck home.
+
+"So is the Baptist your church," she answered pertly. "I guess I have a
+right to change, as well as you."
+
+Mrs. Brenton, that same evening, took the disclosure in quite a
+different spirit. To her mind, the relaxing of one's creed spelt ruin,
+the doorway of the church Episcopal was but the outer portal of the
+Church of Rome and, like all elderly women of puritanic stock who have
+spent their lives in a Protestant community, Mrs. Brenton looked on
+Rome as the last station but one upon the broad road to hell. None the
+less, she strove to phrase her objections as gently as she was able.
+However misguided Scott might be, she saw that he was in earnest, and
+upon that account she was the more loath to hurt him.
+
+"Scott," she said, with what appeared to herself to be the extreme of
+tolerance; "if you must, I suppose you must; but I am sure that it will
+kill your grandfather."
+
+If Scott, just then, had been in a mood for theological discussion, he
+might have pointed out to his mother the flaw in the logic of her own
+belief. Grandfather Wheeler, translated into the glory that awaits the
+faithful servant of the Lord, in all surety should have been beyond the
+danger of vicarious and everlasting death. However, Scott was too much
+in earnest, just then, about his own fate, to heed that of his worthy
+and departed grandsire.
+
+"I am sorry, mother," he repeated gravely; "but I am afraid it is that,
+or nothing. All this summer, perhaps even before, I have been thinking
+things over. I'll be glad to preach. Maybe--" his accent was boyish in
+its extreme simplicity; "maybe, if I try my best, I'll do somebody a
+little good. But," and his face stiffened, as he spoke; "but I'll be
+hanged if I am going to stand up in the pulpit and say a whole lot of
+things I don't believe and don't want to believe, just because
+Grandfather Wheeler and Great-grandfather Wheeler and all that tribe
+did believe them."
+
+Across his energy, his growing excitement, Mrs. Brenton's level voice
+cut in a little sternly.
+
+"What is it that you don't believe, my son?" she asked him.
+
+Scott rose to his feet, took a turn up the room, a turn down it. Then
+he faced her.
+
+"I'm not sure I even know that--yet," he answered. "I've got to find it
+out. Honestly, mother," again there came a note of pleading; "isn't it
+about as much to the point to find out the things you don't believe as
+the things you do? And there must be some truth, somewhere, that's
+worth the preaching, no matter how many things you have to throw over,
+before you get to it. It's that I'm after now, a truth that is the
+truth, that can be proved. Once I get it, I'll stand up and preach it,
+and prove it, too, to every man I meet. That's what religion's for.
+But, to do it, I must go into a church which gives you a little leeway,
+a church which lets you interpret a few things to suit yourself, not
+lays down the law about the last little phrase of the meaning you are
+allowed to put into them."
+
+Again there came the restless pacing of the room. This time, it lasted
+longer. At last, though, he halted by her side, and rested one lean
+hand upon her shoulder.
+
+"Mother," he said, and now all boyishness had fallen away from him; "I
+am sorry if this is going to hurt you; but I can't help it. Two years
+ago, I told you I would study for the ministry. I shall keep my word;
+but the way I keep it must be left for me to choose."
+
+There was no mistaking the resonant purpose in his voice. Recognizing
+it, his mother yielded to it of necessity. As quietly as possible, she
+accepted the choice that he had made, and then she went away to her own
+room. A half-hour later, kneeling beside her bed, she lost herself in
+supplication on behalf of those who bow the knee to Baal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+
+In the fulness of time, Scott married Catie. To put the case more
+accurately, albeit in less lovely phrase, Scott was married by Catie.
+From start to finish, Catie was the active force in whatever wooing
+achieved itself, the active force which swept down on and annexed a
+passive principle.
+
+From the start, their courtship lacked most of the hallmarks of that
+tender process. There were few endearments, fewer still of the
+half-told, half-guessed confidences which, by their very fragmentary
+nature only serve to add emphasis to a comprehension that can construct
+a living, vital intimacy out of such slight materials. Indeed, there
+was no especial effort at spiritual comprehension between them.
+Instead, their unsentimental wooing was a sort of amatory bargain day
+for Catie, who must have the best sort of husband to be found on the
+domestic market. For Scott, on the other hand, it was the bored
+acquiescence of a man too full of other dreams and hopes and even
+concrete plannings to regard the choosing of a wife as more important
+than the selection of his next-morning's steak. His mother had
+impressed upon him that Catie would be the best wife possible for him.
+The professors in the divinity school had laid some stress upon the
+advantage of their clergy's marrying young. Therefore Scott Brenton
+dutifully took to himself a wife, without the slightest previous notion
+of what domestic intercourse was bound to mean.
+
+Notwithstanding the education given him by Reed Opdyke and his pseudo
+sirens, young Scott Brenton was singularly ignorant of the elements
+that go into the making of almost any woman, singularly ignorant
+regarding all the practical details of wedded life. Of course, he knew
+his mother well; but she seemed to him a little bit archaic. Besides,
+he knew her only as a thing apart from all other human relations, as an
+isolated personality whose one point of contact was with himself. The
+society of a woman who parted her hair straight down the middle of her
+head and who quoted Job at breakfast was not a perfect preparation for
+modern domestic life.
+
+As for Catie, or Catia, as she now called herself, she was modern
+enough, distressingly so sometimes. Nevertheless, analyzed, she would
+not have seemed to Scott at all domestic. She was too much wrapped up
+in her own personal concerns, too uncomprehending in a spiritual
+crisis. Domesticity, to be practical, must consist of something else
+than mere ability to keep a house and to extract from the butcher the
+best cuts obtainable for one's income. One's spiritual bric-a-brac must
+be taken down and dusted with just as careful reverence as one shows
+the glass things on one's mantel. Catia could cut her own cloth up into
+pieces, and then sew up the pieces into quite presentable garments; she
+could make good coffee and cook lamb chops to perfection; but, that
+done, she could not sit down of an evening and fling herself, heart and
+soul, into the interests of her husband's life.
+
+Of this, as yet, Scott Brenton was mercifully ignorant. He might have
+known it; but, unhappily, he never had found it altogether worth his
+while to meditate very much upon the question. He passed by Catia as an
+established fact; he left her quite unanalyzed. Instead, he turned the
+whole force of his analytic power upon the needs of his profession,
+without in the least realizing that, in the case of a married man,
+professional acumen and efficiency depend a good deal upon the quality
+of his domestic atmosphere. Later on, he was destined to find out that
+a family jar at breakfast, a discussion born of a muddy cup of coffee
+or a sticky muffin, can wreck the fervour of a sermon born of a week of
+prayer and meditation, wreck it at so late an hour that any salvage is
+impossible.
+
+"Really," Catia observed to her solitary bridesmaid, a week before the
+wedding day; "you'd never think it that Scott was just getting ready to
+be married; would you?"
+
+The bridesmaid was not so much tactless as envious. As she and Catia
+were well aware, Scott Brenton was the one really personable man upon
+the horizon of their village life, the only man who seemed to have it
+in him to translate a wife out of that humdrum village into the
+seething world beyond. Of course, it was nice of Catia to have chosen
+her for bridesmaid. Nevertheless, it would have been far, far more
+agreeable, if only she could have been the bride. Therefore,--
+
+"No," she answered flatly. "No; I never would. I'd think he ought to be
+in a perfect twitter, by this time; but he takes it as calmly as if a
+wedding weren't any more important than a sack of beans."
+
+Catia, hoping for a prompt denial of the point of view she had put
+forth, was conscious of a certain pique at the prompt agreement. She
+showed her pique with equal promptness, and phrased it in unanswerable
+rebuke.
+
+"How common you are, Eva!" she said quite scornfully. "A sack of beans!
+One would know your father kept a country store."
+
+Eva Saint Clair Andrews felt herself justified in the retort
+discourteous.
+
+"It is better to keep a country store than it is to hoe your own
+potatoes, barefoot," she responded tartly. "Besides, what about Scott
+Brenton's father?"
+
+Then, catching sight, by way of the mirror, of Catia's irate
+countenance, she stayed her speech. Already, she well realized, her
+bridesmaid's robes were in the extreme of jeopardy. Unsatisfactory as
+it was going to be to take the second place at Scott Brenton's wedding,
+it would be far more unsatisfactory to take the twenty-second, and
+watch the ceremony from one of the rear pews of the church, instead of
+from the front aisle which answers architecturally to the functions of
+the chancel. Besides, there was going to be a visiting minister extra,
+a rector who was a classmate of Scott Brenton and therefore rather
+young. And no one ever knew. Accordingly, Eva Saint Clair Andrews,
+called usually by the whole of her name, even in intimate address,
+stayed her speech and, after a fashion, temporized.
+
+"Of course," she added, with a hasty giggle; "a minister like Scott is
+more used to weddings than we girls are."
+
+Turning from the mirror, Catia spoke with a dignity which was crushing.
+
+"But not to his own," she informed her guest.
+
+And Eva Saint Clair Andrews gave up the effort to extricate herself
+from disgrace. Instead, she fell upon discussion of the wedding plans.
+
+"How many do you expect at the reception, Catia?" she made query, with
+an accent which discretion had suddenly rendered exceedingly full of
+respect.
+
+"Oh, I can't stop to count them up," Catia replied, with magnificent
+carelessness. "I've asked about everybody in town, of course. Mother
+would have insisted on it, anyway; and, besides, Scott's position would
+make us do it, even if he were the only one to count."
+
+Eva Saint Clair Andrews opened her blue eyes a little wider than was
+quite becoming.
+
+"I didn't suppose the Brentons were----" she was beginning.
+
+But Catia interrupted, with a fresh access of magnificence.
+
+"Not the Brentons, Eva," Catia had only lately forbidden herself the
+village use of the full name, and her sudden recollection of the fact
+caused her to speak with nippy brevity; "not the Brentons, but just
+Scott himself. Of course, we owe it to his cloth."
+
+"Yes," Eva Saint Clair Andrews answered, in an appreciative murmur.
+None the less, lacking the training vouchsafed to Catia by the closing
+functions of the divinity school, she wondered what the cloth might be,
+that it should so outrank good Mrs. Brenton in its claim to social
+precedence.
+
+A week later, came the wedding. Even the most carping one of all the
+village gossips was ready to agree that it had thrown new lustre over
+the entire community, and even shed its beams into the next county
+whence certain of the guests had come. There had been many guests and
+some unusual costumes. The church had been filled with a wealth of
+flowers, chiefly of the home-grown species, until the place reeked with
+the spicy odours, not of Araby the blest, but of a kitchen garden, or a
+soup bunch.
+
+Beside the village parson, there had been three young clergymen in
+attendance and more or less in active service while the nuptial knot
+was being tied. Indeed, so many were there of them and so active were
+they in their ministrations that poor Mrs. Brenton, down in the front
+pew and painfully shiny between her proud maternal tears and the
+reflected lustre of her new black satin frock, was never quite certain
+in her mind which one of them, in the end, had pronounced her son and
+Catia man and wife. For the sake of the ancestral Wheelers, she hoped
+it was the broadcloth-coated village parson; but she had her doubts.
+Her doubts increased into a positive agony of uneasiness when she
+discovered, at the reception later on, that the three young clergymen,
+with one consent, had put their waistcoats on hind side before. Had she
+conceived the notion that, within the limits of three years, her son
+would adopt the same preposterous fashion, she would have believed
+herself in readiness for the nearest madhouse. Mercifully, however, so
+much was spared her, at that time and for ever after.
+
+The reception itself was a glorious occasion. Practically the entire
+village was present, a good half of them in new frocks manufactured by
+themselves in honour of the great event. It was now four years and
+seven months since there had been a wedding in the village. The local
+type of damsel was a pre-natal spinster, and the few village boys went
+otherwhere in search of wives. Brides there had been, of course; but
+they had been of the ready-made variety. Other communities had had the
+glory of the weddings. It was not every day, by any means, that the
+local leaders of society were asked to prepare themselves a wedding
+garment. They stitched away all the more cunningly on that account.
+Judged by the standards of the _Ladies' Galaxy_, their gowns were
+models of the mode. Viewed even in the uncritical eyes of the visiting
+clergy, they were, as has been said, unusual.
+
+Aside from gowns, the reception was chiefly notable for its cake; not
+cakes, but solid loaves made up in layers with oozy sweetnesses
+sandwiched in between. Served with neither forks nor napkins, it gave
+rise to complications; but it was none the less appreciated upon that
+account. There were two kinds of lemonade, too, one plain, one mixed
+with home-brewed grape juice. In all surety, Catia's wedding reception
+left nothing lacking on the score of elegance. Later, her satisfaction
+was obvious in her shining eyes, as she halted, half-way down the front
+stairs, to look upon her guests. The reception was nearing its end, for
+Catia was now dressed for going away, and topped with a hat which
+combined the more essential characteristics of the helmet of the
+British grenadier and a mascot upon a Princeton football field. Indeed,
+it was almost as rigid in its outlines as was the smile which creased
+its wearer's lips. Catia was not unimpressive in her new dignity of
+wifehood; but the dignity bore traces of diligent rehearsal, and left
+singularly little to the imagination. By her side, Scott, looking down
+upon his fellow townsmen, wore the self-conscious smirk of a sheepish
+schoolboy; and the best of his fellow townsmen respected him the more
+on that account. Catia was the more impressive of the two, they told
+themselves; but there was no especial sense in a pair of young things
+like these, trying to act as if their getting married were a mere fact
+of every-day routine.
+
+Smiling steadily, Catia stood there, waiting until, by very force of
+motionless persistence, she had focussed every eye upon her person.
+Then, according to the mandates of the _Ladies' Galaxy_, she hurled her
+bridal bouquet down across the banister, not upon the waiting Eva Saint
+Clair Andrews who hankered for it lustily, but straight against the
+manly waistcoat of the least and the pinkest one of the visiting
+clergy, a youth of twenty-five or six who had reluctantly torn himself
+away from an anxious wife and a croupy baby, on purpose to be on hand
+at Brenton's wedding. Mercifully for Catia's poise, her young husband
+forebore explaining to her the reason for the three-fold clerical roar
+which went up upon the heels of her well-meant attention.
+
+Afterwards, in looking backward, that evening seemed to Scott to stand
+out as a dream, unforeseen, yet not inconsequential. Nothing that had
+gone before appeared to him to be able to explain it. It just was, a
+fact without any planning or volition on his part. He had known Catia
+from his little boyhood, had been used to her, had counted on her in a
+sense; but always he had held himself a little bit aloof from her, even
+when, to outward seeming, he had sought her with the greatest
+regularity. Early in their intercourse, indeed, he had discovered the
+main fact of all those which were to govern their later life together:
+that he could not so much talk over things with her, as talk them over
+with himself when she was present.
+
+And then, all at once and without warning, Catia had swept in and
+dominated him completely, dominated him with her oozy layer cake, and
+her two sorts of lemonade, and with her Princeton grenadier of a hat.
+Beside it all, he felt himself dwindling into insignificance, despite
+the hind-side-before waistcoats of the visiting clergymen and his
+mother's gown of stiff black satin. It was a positive relief to him
+when he could turn his back upon the whole hot, chattering function,
+and, with Catia's new gilt-initialled bag to balance his much-rubbed
+suitcase, go striding away to the station underneath the wintry
+freshness of the night. Catia had rebelled at the idea of walking to
+their train; but the one hack afforded by the village had gone away to
+a funeral in the next town but two.
+
+So they went stepping out into the new life before them: Catia Brenton
+and Scott, her husband. To Catia it seemed that, the first of her
+milestones reached, it was time for her to sit down for a while, and
+rest, and take a little comfort out of thinking over what she already
+had achieved. To Scott, the first stage of his journey had scarcely
+been begun. Indeed, it did not even start from that night, nor from any
+night in which Catia's memory could have a share. And yet, asked, he
+would have been swift to affirm that he loved Catia; that life ahead of
+him, without her for his wife, would be unsatisfactory, perhaps a
+little vacant. Catia had always been a part of his environment, ever
+since the long-gone day when she had hailed him, sodden in his weeping,
+the while he cooled his nether man upon the chilly doorstep.
+
+For nearly twenty years, they had been meeting life together, and
+comparing notes upon the impressions they had gained. Often and often,
+each one had found the other's notes a cipher, had lacked the cipher's
+proper code. Nevertheless, there had been a certain sense of intimacy
+in the mere fact of the comparison. Without Catia in his past, Scott
+Brenton would have been lonely. Therefore he felt it safe to reason
+that, without her in his future, the loneliness would become infinitely
+worse. The marriage, in its inception, might have been altogether
+Catia's doing. In the end, he had been giving it his full assent, and
+he took his marriage vows in all sincerity, determined to do his best
+towards their fulfilment.
+
+His fingers shut quite closely, then, upon the slippery handle of
+Catia's new bag, and he stepped a bit nearer to her side, as they
+halted beneath the shining stars, to look back upon what they left
+behind them. Catia saw the huddled gathering of the village people,
+already looking a little dowdy to her critical eyes. Scott only saw
+four faces, grouped in perspective: his mother, tearful, a little
+tremulous, yet radiant in her full content; behind her, two of the
+visiting clergy, classmates and chums of the divinity school, and,
+still behind these two, the eager young face of the curly-headed rector
+of the many hyphens, the man who first had opened his eyes to a
+brand-new gospel, one of fatherly affection, not of pursuant wrath, a
+gospel elastic as the mind of man, plastic as the flowing life of all
+the ages, not a hard and fast affair whose boundaries were laid down
+for all time, hundreds of years before. And this was the man of them
+all, and not the broadcloth village parson, whom Scott Brenton had
+chosen to pronounce himself and Catia man and wife.
+
+Why not?
+
+Scott waved his hand. His mother sought her handkerchief, though not to
+wave it. His two classmates saluted him, the one with Catia's big
+bouquet, the other with a crochetted "throw" snatched from the nearest
+chair. Above them all, though, the curly-headed rector flung up his arm
+in greeting, and with his arm his voice.
+
+"Bless you, old man, and keep at it! Remember I'm always in the same
+old corner, if you ever need me."
+
+And Scott Brenton took the assurance with him, as he entered into his
+new life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+
+"Scott," Catia let go the coffee pot and looked up to face him; "I do
+wish you'd begin to think about smartening yourself up a little."
+
+Brenton, who still clung to his bachelor habit of reading the newspaper
+between swallows of coffee and snatches of toast and jam, looked up at
+the arraignment which lay in Catia's tone, if not within her words.
+
+"Smarten myself up?" he echoed, in blank question.
+
+"Yes." Catia put her elbows on the table and clasped her hands around
+her cup. "I was looking at you, Scott, all the time this last
+convocation was going on."
+
+He smiled benevolently, by way of preparation for flinging himself once
+more upon the columns of his morning paper.
+
+"You'd much better have been looking at the Bishop," he advised her
+good-temperedly.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"The Bishop was all right," she said, with an emphasis so caustic as to
+catch and hold his attention.
+
+Used as he had become, the past two years, to pinpricks of this sort,
+his colour betrayed how much the present pinprick hurt him. None the
+less, he still held on to his temper.
+
+"And I wasn't?" he queried, with an effort at a smile. "Sorry, Catia.
+What's the trouble?"
+
+"All sorts of little things," she answered, with a disconcerting
+frankness. "Not any one of them count for much; but, taken all
+together, they're----" She hesitated for a word.
+
+Brenton supplied it.
+
+"Deplorable!" Then he added, "Sorry, Catia, as I said before. Still, I
+suppose, if I'm not a beauty, I'm about what the good Lord made me."
+
+"Fudge!" She put down her cup and rested her chin upon her palms. Seen
+across the table and in a pose so undeniably feminine and so becoming
+to almost every woman, Catia was good to look upon; would have been
+good, that is, had not her personality been uncomfortably domineering.
+The two years since her marriage had rubbed down certain of her angles,
+and had given her at least a superficial polish. She occasionally
+admitted to herself that she was very near to being handsome. A more
+critical observer and one less prejudiced, however, might possibly have
+added that she was curiously devoid of charm.
+
+Brenton, on the other hand, was growing curiously magnetic, as the
+months ran on, was developing a personal charm of which his student
+days had given scarcely any hint. The old lines, born of hard work and
+scanty nourishment, had vanished from his face. In place of them had
+come other lines, vastly more becoming, lines engraved by earnest,
+conscientious thought and study, by a life so ascetic as to be a little
+narrow, perhaps, but noble enough in its aspirations to lift itself
+high above the common level. He still was lean and thin, still a little
+stooping. The habits of his life would account for that; he was too
+busy saving other men's souls to give much thought to the preservation
+of his own body.
+
+Even in a small and humdrum country parish, the souls of men need
+careful shepherding; every now and then there comes a petty crisis when
+they confess to a desire for outside guidance, and it was in such
+crises that Scott Brenton found his opportunity. His sermons, albeit a
+trifle immature, were really clever. None the less, they dwindled into
+insignificance beside the practical, personal help he gave to his
+parishioners, a help that came without the asking, whether the crisis
+were a dying cow, a small son's broken arm, or a fire in a granary just
+after the final harvest. Whatever happened in the parish, for good or
+ill, Scott Brenton always appeared upon the scene. At the very first,
+he had come of his own accord. Later, if his arrival delayed itself for
+a dozen minutes, he was sent for in hot haste. In every crisis, he was
+ready with practical advice; but he worked with both hands, the while
+he gave it.
+
+Under such conditions, how he wrote his sermons was a question
+unanswerable by any one but Catia who trimmed the lamps, next morning.
+To Catia's great disgust, despite the scale of living due to his
+profession, Brenton had taken it quietly for granted that, for the
+present, they would keep no maid. His salary was small; he must have
+something saved to give away in cases of emergency. Catia and he were
+strong, and the rectory was small. Of course, Catia could have a little
+girl to come in at odd hours. What other help she needed, he would give
+her out of his scanty leisure. And Catia, who had dreamed of a
+luxurious idleness unknown to most women in that community of simple
+habits, was forced to tie on a wide pinafore and roll up her sleeves
+above a steaming dishpan. She did it all, however, with an air of
+patient martyrdom which was not lost upon her husband; while, upon the
+rare occasions when they entertained a clerical guest, she added an
+extra note of unaccustomed abnegation which was intended to impress
+upon the guest that she was the hapless victim of a fall from better
+days. The parish, in so far as she was able, she disdained completely.
+At the infrequent times that she was driven into close quarters with
+it, she made up for her unpopularity among the vestrymen by taking it
+out most vigorously upon their wives. Indeed, her lifelong familiarity
+with what she termed the narrowness of a small community made her the
+more intolerant, now that its groove was closing about her for a second
+time.
+
+Therefore, for over a year now, Catia secretly had chafed with the
+friction of her surroundings. As yet, however, she had not confessed to
+Brenton the chafing, had not explained to him that her eyes were
+searching their horizon for any possible loophole of escape. Catia was
+more wise than are most women. She never wasted any breath in demanding
+absolute futilities. For the present, she saw clearly, Brenton was
+quite contented with his parish. For the present, it was enough for his
+young ambitions to know he had a parish and was doing it some good.
+Later, she would take a hand in stirring up his slumbering ambition. If
+she knew Scott at all, he would not be content for ever with preaching
+to country farmers and dandling their babies on his knees; nor with
+interspersing moral reflections with inquiries regarding the season's
+crops; nor with basing his sermons upon the tares and the wheat, and
+the fig tree, and other texts so palpably bucolic in their interest.
+However, Catia would grant him a little resting time, before she goaded
+him up to girding his loins anew. Indeed, he needed it, she admitted
+freely to herself in her more generous moments. The years of study,
+long at best, and, in his case, lengthened by needful intervals of
+money-earning toil, had taken it out of him badly. He needed a little
+time to recover from their strain, to grow accustomed to his new
+dignity as preacher and to learn to take himself a little less
+strenuously, before he would be fitted to assume his proper place in a
+wider field than any of which as yet he appeared to be dreaming.
+
+However, two years, it seemed to Catia, had been an ample rest-time.
+Therefore,--
+
+"Fudge!" she said. And then, "Don't be profane, Scott," she rebuked
+him, with the literalness which had replaced her meagre childish sense
+of humour. "The good Lord didn't make your surplices a full eighth of a
+yard too long, nor put you into a black stole for the whole year round.
+Besides, you were the only man in that whole convocation that buttoned
+his collar in front. I should have supposed you'd have known better
+than that, before you got your license."
+
+Brenton's lips curved into the little smile she always dreaded. Because
+she dreaded it, it antagonized her.
+
+"Did you?" he queried.
+
+Her antagonism lent a tartness to her reply.
+
+"I never professed to go through a divinity school," she retorted. "If
+I had, though----" Her pause was fraught with meaning.
+
+He made no effort to discount the meaning. Instead,--
+
+"I don't doubt it, Catia," he responded quietly. "However, as it
+happens, I had some other things to think about."
+
+That brought her to a momentary halt. However, she swiftly rallied.
+
+"Some people can think of more than one thing at a time," she
+announced, with something of the same accent in which, long years
+before, she had ejaculated "Dirty-Face!"
+
+But Brenton's mind was hungrily intent upon his paper. Not even two
+years of Catia's corrective moods had taught him to grasp the fact that
+she would never cease from her corrections until he had given evidence
+of writhing underneath their sting. It was not enough for her to have
+the last word; she must be left in a position to gloat upon its visible
+effect. Else, wherein lay the pleasure of having given it utterance?
+Brenton, with manlike unconsciousness of this great fact of feminine
+psychology, once more buried himself in his morning paper. Promptly and
+ruthlessly Catia exhumed him.
+
+"Scott," she said, with a petulance which she permitted herself but
+rarely, not so much for moral reasons as because the _Ladies' Galaxy_
+had pronounced it bad for the complexion; "do put down that stupid paper
+and attend to me."
+
+"Yes, dear." And Brenton blinked a little, in the sudden change of
+focus demanded of his eyes.
+
+Catia only saw the blinking, and to herself she pronounced it a new and
+ugly mannerism. She did not take the trouble to notice the eyes
+themselves, to read the earnest desire to please her, written so
+plainly in their luminous gray depths.
+
+"Oh, do wake up!" she adjured him, with increasing impatience. "Scott,
+do you know you never really come to life till after breakfast? Can't
+you see I want to talk to you? Now do listen and answer me. What do you
+mean to do about this Saint Peter's matter?"
+
+"To do about it!" It was no especial wonder that the echo irritated
+Catia; and yet neither was it any especial wonder that Scott, in his
+astonishment, was betrayed into an echo of that sort. As yet, her
+meaning was opaque to him.
+
+"Yes, do about it," Catia echoed, in her turn. "They say there's sure
+to be a vacancy, and that it's a splendid place."
+
+"Who say?" Brenton queried cautiously.
+
+"All the convocation. Don't be a dunce and pretend, Scott. Anyway, I'm
+not a mole; I can see which way the weather vanes are pointing. They
+were all talking about it, while the convocation was going on. Ever so
+many of the wives spoke to me about it, and told me that you were the
+man who ought to have it."
+
+Quite tranquilly Brenton helped himself to more butter.
+
+"Then, knowing the Bishop's common sense, it seems highly probable to
+me that I shall be the man to get it," he responded.
+
+"You won't, unless you try for it," Catia assured him.
+
+He shook his head. The idea of ecclesiastical wirepulling was repugnant
+to his nature.
+
+"One doesn't try for things of that kind, Catia," he answered.
+
+"Then one doesn't get them," she retorted curtly.
+
+It was Brenton who broke the next period of silence.
+
+"Besides," he said, as if his sentences had followed each other without
+break; "I am not at all sure that my work here is done, by any means."
+
+"Scott!" Catia put on the cover of the sugar bowl with a defiant clash.
+"Surely, you don't mean to stay buried in this little hole much
+longer?"
+
+Once more his smile showed whimsical.
+
+"Really, Catia, I hadn't thought about it as a hole," he said. "About
+my staying here or anywhere, I suppose it all depends upon the Bishop."
+
+She pushed her chair back a little from the table, and then clasped her
+hands upon the table's edge. Her attitude betokened her intention of
+staying there until the matter had been fought out to a finish.
+
+"Not one half so much upon the Bishop as it does upon yourself," she
+told him firmly. "The Bishop decides things in the end; but he never
+originates them. Unless you stir yourself a little and show him that
+you're restless, you'll be welcome to sit for all time to come in one
+corner of the diocese. In fact, you have been sitting in a corner for
+two years. It is high time you showed him you were getting cramps in
+your knees, and needed a higher seat to straighten them out. There is
+no especial sense in your wasting your time among these people. Any
+broken-down old hack ought to be all they've any right to look for."
+
+"But not all they need," Brenton interpolated swiftly.
+
+She waved aside the interpolation.
+
+"It's what you need, Scott, I'm talking about," she told him. "You are
+young, and you need a chance. What's more, the Bishop isn't going to
+offer it to you, until you give him to understand that you expect it.
+There are too many hungry mouths open for every bit of advantage to
+make it worth his while to hunt for any more. As for Saint Peter's,
+they all say it is an ideal parish: a rich church in a college town,
+with a large salary and not too much work. In fact," Catia added
+wisely; "they all say that there never does need to be too much work in
+a parish where a good share of the congregation are very young, and
+transients."
+
+Brenton lifted his head. Then he lifted his brows, fine, narrow brows
+and arching.
+
+"It strikes me that there might be all the more," he said.
+
+Catia's fingers beat a tattoo on the table.
+
+"You're just for all the world like your mother, Scott," she said, with
+renewed impatience.
+
+"I hope so," Brenton assented gravely, for Mrs. Brenton had died, a
+year before, and her memory still was sacred in the mind of her son.
+
+Not even Catia, in her present mood, dared introduce a jarring note,
+until a little interval had followed upon Scott's grave reply. She,
+too, had cared for Mrs. Brenton; at least, she had cared as much as it
+was in her to care for any one. She, too, had mourned sincerely, when
+the patient, unselfish, plodding life went out. Indeed, there had
+seemed to be no little cruelty in the fate which had ordained that Mrs.
+Brenton, after giving her life and strength and all her prayers to the
+equipment of her son in his profession, should not have been allowed a
+little longer time to take pleasure in the things her tireless effort
+had accomplished. For, though Scott had done his best to help himself,
+the real strain had rested on his mother, the more real in that it had
+been unbroken by the variety of his student existence, unrewarded by
+the elating consciousness of personal achievement which had come to him
+at the end of every stage of his development.
+
+In all truth, it had been upon Mrs. Brenton that the burden had fallen
+most heavily. She had accomplished the almost impossible achievement;
+yet to her had been denied the fullest fruition of her dreams. Scott
+was a clergyman at last, a preacher, it was said, of more than ordinary
+promise; but the gospel that he was going forth to preach to all men
+was not a gospel accredited by any of the ancestral Parson Wheelers.
+Therefore it was that, after all her struggle, poor Mrs. Brenton died,
+a disappointed woman. Therefore it was that, by the very reason of the
+sincerity of his own decisions, Scott, her son, realized her
+disappointment, and cherished her memory the more tenderly on that
+account. Vaguely, but resolutely, he had clung to the hope that the day
+would dawn when his mother would come into his own way of thinking. He
+only resigned that hope, while he listened to the prayer of the village
+parson beside his mother's open grave. It was an extemporaneous prayer;
+but it lacked no detail on that account. And there are few things in
+life more tragic than permanent misunderstandings between a child and
+parent. That this one must now be permanent not even Scott Brenton's
+theological tenets could leave him room for doubt.
+
+Catia's cause for mourning was by far more practical. She realized that
+it was Mrs. Brenton who had provided her with a professional husband,
+in place of the petty farmers and shopkeepers who, otherwise, had
+bounded her horizon. Moreover, she missed Mrs. Brenton sorely, when
+there came a need to discuss Scott's faults and failings, to plan how
+best to put an end to them before they stood in the way of his career.
+Also of her career. For, despite her manifest disdain of the village
+parish where, as it seemed to her, Scott was merely marking time, Catia
+had her own keen notions as to the part, granted a suitable environment
+to serve as stage, a rector's wife could play. Saint Peter's, taken as
+a stage, would admirably suit her purposes. A college town, and a
+girls' college town at that, could not fail to surround the rector's
+lady, not only with a proper train of satellites, but with an audience
+worthy of her utmost powers.
+
+Already, at the recent convocation, she had probed the subject
+cleverly. That is, in the most incidental fashion, she had led the talk
+around to the new Bishop of Western Oklahoma, had casually mentioned
+the parish whence he had clambered to the bishop's throne, and then, in
+greedily receptive silence, she had listened to the scraps of
+conversation evoked by her apparently careless words. At first, her
+investigations had been carried on among the other diocesan wives.
+Finding them, to all seeming, gullible and loquacious, she had even
+ventured on the Bishop. And the good old Bishop, near-sighted and
+slightly hard of hearing, had carried away the genial impression that
+Brenton's wife was a very pretty woman and would be of inestimable help
+to him in managing a parish. Indeed, the Bishop, who was celibate,
+thought much about the helpful influence of a proper wife, the evening
+after his short talk with Catia. He even wondered whether he had been
+quite wise in allowing the two of them--for, ever afterward, he
+persisted in thinking of them jointly--to be buried in a country parish
+where it was possible an experienced widower might manage the work
+alone.
+
+Of this, however, and of the good Bishop's later meditations and of his
+consequent questionings and investigations, Catia unhappily was in
+ignorance. Her ignorance, moreover, led her now into employing on her
+husband the final weapon in her woman's quiver, namely pathos.
+
+She dropped her eyes to her fingernails, and spoke with reverential
+deliberation.
+
+"She was a good woman, Scott, a dear, good woman, even if she always
+was a little narrow. It can't fail to be a pleasure to you now to think
+back to the way we have done our best to carry out her wishes as--"
+suddenly Catia bethought herself of the change in the label of their
+theology--"as far as our own consciences would allow us. And now, dear
+boy," her eyes drooped lower still over her request; "now that you
+haven't her to consider any longer, aren't you willing to do just one
+very, very little thing for me?"
+
+"I hope so, Catia," Brenton responded, still quite gravely. "What is it
+that you want?"
+
+Despite her efforts to the contrary, her voice thrilled with the sudden
+surety that she had gained her cause.
+
+"Write to the Bishop, dear, and tell him you will take Saint Peter's,
+when he offers it," she begged him.
+
+Brenton lifted his head to stare at her, aghast.
+
+"Catia, I can't," he told her sternly.
+
+Nevertheless, in the end of things, he did. His later self-reckonings
+were all the more severe on that account. In more senses than one,
+Scott Brenton's rest-time ended with his turning his back upon the
+country parish.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+
+"Well, what do you think about it, father?" Olive Keltridge queried, as
+she tapped the table with the corner of the note she was holding in her
+hand.
+
+The tapping, however, was no indication of any filial impatience. It
+was merely to remind her parent that something was still expected of
+him, before he drifted off again into an absent-minded study of the
+medical journal clutched between his fists. Olive Keltridge would have
+been the last person in the world to dissent from the general adoration
+of her father. He was all in all to her, as she to him. None the less,
+she was driven to admit at times that it was a trifle difficult to keep
+him up to his social duties.
+
+Olive's mother had died, six years before. The girl had come out of
+school to take upon her slim young shoulders the management of her
+father's house. Moreover, in that aged town where, aside from a few
+score new professors and their callow young assistants, everybody's
+grandparents had played dolls and tin soldiers together, Dr.
+Keltridge's absent-minded fashion of failing to provide his daughter
+with a feminine chaperon had caused no comment whatsoever. Everybody
+that one met out at dinner knew all about everybody else for several
+generations. Either they were indigenous, and born knowing; or else,
+imported and properly accredited, they took measures to inform
+themselves at the earliest possible opportunity. All the other people,
+whom one saw in church and in the street cars, did not count at all.
+
+For that reason, no one appeared to find it at all strange that, from
+the day she put on long frocks, Olive Keltridge should preside,
+unchaperoned, at her father's table, should receive her father's guests
+without other protection from their wiles than that accorded by his
+presence. To be sure, that presence was not invariably dependable. On
+more than one occasion, Olive had been obliged to delay the serving of
+the dinner and excuse herself from her waiting guests, while she went
+in search of her father in his laboratory. The guests, though, as a
+rule, had known Doctor Eustace Keltridge even longer than his daughter
+had had the chance to do. They forgot their hunger completely in their
+amused curiosity as to the condition in which their host would put in
+his appearance.
+
+Olive Keltridge was a born hostess. She had been prompt to grasp the
+fact that guests should be amused as well as fed, prompt to realize
+that a family skeleton can easily be converted to a family
+Jack-in-the-box, if only he can be snatched from the closet and
+manipulated with a little tact. Upon the first occasion of her father's
+failure to line up beside her in season to receive his guests, she had
+gone in search of him a little petulantly, had reappeared beside him,
+hot-cheeked and a trifle sulky. That one experience had been the last
+one of its kind, however. Olive had lain awake, that night, to ponder
+on the interval between the time of her discovering her sire, his hair
+rampant, his necktie shockingly awry and his sleeves rolled up, messing
+contentedly among his pots and pans of cultures and totally oblivious
+of his waiting guests, and the much later time when she had literally
+driven him, irreproachably clad and beaming delightedly, into the
+drawing-room ahead of her. She had thought it all over, all, from the
+quality of the delayed dinner down to the things that the guests were
+likely to be saying in her absence. Then, young as she was, she took
+her resolution. After that, she would catch her father suddenly, and
+bring him back, red-handed. A man like Doctor Keltridge ought not to be
+reduced to the conventional dead level of his fellow townsmen; it would
+be a waste of rare material. Rather, as the phrase is, he should be
+featured. And Olive proceeded to feature him accordingly, to the solid
+satisfaction of her father and to the no small rapture of his old-time
+cronies.
+
+As a matter of course, under this new and unorthodox arrangement, a
+dinner invitation at the Keltridges' became a thing of almost infinite
+value. Apart from the surety of the good dinner, and the cordial
+welcome of the pretty little hostess who, young as she was, yet
+understood to the full the delicate distinction between chat and
+chatter: apart from all this was the humorous question contained within
+the host. No one could ever foretell whether he would greet them on the
+threshold in his overcoat and goloshes, or be invisible until the
+dinner was announced, and then be led in by one cuff, like a guilty
+youngster caught among the jam pots. No one ever could foretell,
+either, what would be the doctor's costume for the evening, whether it
+would combine a dinner jacket and a four-in-hand, or whether a wadded
+housecoat and no necktie at all above his evening linen would announce
+to his guests that a sudden thirst for knowledge had cut athwart his
+dressing and sent him to the laboratory to discover how some malignant
+brew or other might be getting on. Upon one point only Olive, product
+of these modern days, stood firm. Her father might be as charmingly
+erratic as he chose; but he must sterilize his hands, before he came
+into the drawing-room. And upon that one point of domestic discipline
+his guests rested in placid confidence, sure that, as long as Olive was
+at the helm, they could devour the Keltridge dinners in reasonable
+surety of not being poisoned.
+
+If Doctor Keltridge was charming as host, he was even more charming,
+taken as a father. He was adoring, indulgent, whimsical, and singularly
+tactful in spite of his absent-minded lapses. To Olive, indeed, he
+seemed to be the only man at all well worth the while. Nevertheless, as
+now, it sometimes became imperative to be a little masterful in
+summoning him back to present consciousness just long enough to extract
+an answer from him. Therefore she tapped the table sharply with the
+corner of the note.
+
+"Listen, father!" she urged him, as she laid her other hand across the
+open paper. "What shall I say?"
+
+"Say that they are impossible young asses, a year and a half behind the
+times," her father growled, the while he shifted his paper slightly, to
+free its final column from her covering fingers.
+
+A total stranger to the doctor might have distrusted either his own
+ears, or else the doctor's sanity. Olive knew her father, though; she
+felt no forebodings, albeit her eyes danced at the unexpected nature of
+his response.
+
+"I am afraid that Mrs. Dennison might not take it nicely, if I did,"
+she said.
+
+The doctor's growl rumbled forth once more.
+
+"Better know what one is talking about, then. That theory was all
+exploded, months ago." Then some echo of his daughter's words seemed at
+last to be penetrating his brain, and he lowered his paper with a sigh.
+"What has Mrs. Dennison to do with a thing like this, Olive?" he
+queried blankly. "Dennison is only history, not biological."
+
+Olive laughed outright.
+
+"And Mrs. Dennison is only socio-hospitable," she responded. "Father,
+you really are terrible, this morning."
+
+The doctor smiled benevolently at her arraignment. Then, hurriedly
+gathering himself together, he stuck out an appealing cup for some more
+coffee.
+
+Olive shook her head.
+
+"No; not one other drop. You have had five, already. If you don't stop
+at that, I'll tell the cook to put you on to postum. Now please do
+listen to me. I was asking you whether we'd best go to this dinner of
+Mrs. Dennison's."
+
+"When?" the doctor inquired.
+
+Olive's lips twitched at the corners.
+
+"About a half an hour ago," she answered. "No, wait." Swiftly she
+seized and snatched away the paper, just as her father was preparing to
+bury himself anew. "The dinner is next Thursday, to meet Mr. Brenton."
+
+"Who is Mr. Brenton?" her father asked, with bland interest.
+
+"The new rector. You heard him, two weeks ago, you know." This time,
+Olive's accent held a slight reproach. Purely as a matter of heredity,
+Doctor Keltridge was senior warden of Saint Peter's; but, as a general
+rule, he totally forgot to go to church.
+
+"Oh, yes, yes. The new chap with the voice." The doctor roused himself
+suddenly. "It is a wonderful voice, Olive; his whole respiratory system
+must be perfect, and his lungs. I never heard a better resonance nor
+better breath control. Really, I'd like to hear him speak at closer
+range. When did you say the dinner is? Of course, we'll go. Dennison
+isn't a bad little fellow, even if his mind did stop short at history."
+
+"The dinner is for Thursday," Olive reiterated patiently.
+
+"Thursday. Hm. What am I doing then?" her father questioned for, as may
+be imagined, it was Olive who kept the run of his engagements.
+
+"Nothing, after the hospital directors' meeting at two. Really," Olive
+spoke a little absently, herself; "I almost wish that you were."
+
+As invariably happened, the doctor's attention became alert when she
+least expected it.
+
+"Eh? What?" he asked her, in manifest surprise, for it was most unusual
+for Olive to balk at any invitation.
+
+Her colour came.
+
+"Oh, it's all right. Of course, we'll go. In fact, there's no getting
+out of it, as long as you are senior warden."
+
+The doctor fished for the cord of his see-off glasses. When they were
+astride his nose,--
+
+"You like Mrs. Dennison, Olive," he said crisply. "Therefore, by a
+process of elimination, it probably is the Brentons you don't want to
+meet. What is the matter with them?"
+
+"Oh, nothing," the girl evaded. "It's only that I hate too prompt a
+rushing into a new acquaintance."
+
+"Not always," her father reminded her. "As a rule, you've been willing
+enough to meet the new people at the college."
+
+Olive Keltridge's ancestral notions, the notions born of Brahmin and
+academic New England, spoke in her reply.
+
+"Yes; but they are different."
+
+Her father, though, saw more clearly. He was too well aware of the
+quality of the raw material whence the growing college faculties must
+recruit their ranks.
+
+"Not always, Olive; at least, not nowadays, even if it used to be. But
+what is the matter with Brenton? He seems possible enough."
+
+"Nothing," she confessed, with a little blush for her distinction
+between man and wife. "It is only Mrs. Brenton. He is very possible, I
+should say; but she seems to me a--" and Olive laughed at the absurdity
+of her own coming phrase; "a trifle improbable."
+
+The doctor shook his head.
+
+"I haven't seen her."
+
+"Yes, you have. She was just in front of us, the woman in the
+pinky-yellow feather and the pompadour. You must remember her; she was
+casting sheep's-eyes at Mr. Brenton, all the time he was preaching.
+That was the way I found out who she was. My curiosity led me to ask
+Dolph Dennison about her, and I was quite upset when Dolph tweaked my
+elbow and made signals of distress at poor Mr. Brenton who was standing
+near us. If he is as thin-skinned as he looks, poor man, it must be
+rather hard to go into a new parish and watch the people getting
+accustomed to his wife."
+
+"He brought it on himself," the doctor said, with scanty charity.
+
+"And he has also brought it upon us," Olive assented grimly. "Still, if
+you say so, I will write to Mrs. Dennison that we will come. You'll not
+forget? In the meantime, I'll raise my eben-ezer of devout thanksgiving
+that I'm a girl and therefore can't possibly sit next to Mrs. Brenton
+at the table. I only hope that honour will descend on you."
+
+And it did.
+
+Moreover, in the talk which followed on the being seated, it was Catia
+who took the initiative. She was affable, as befitted her husband's
+lofty rank, sprightly, as seemed considerate of the great age of the
+man beside her. Both attributes were a little bit intensified by her
+complete pleasure in her frock. It had come by express from New York,
+that day, ordered by a picture in a catalogue. The box that held it was
+adorned with a mammoth scarlet star, and the scheme of decoration of
+the frock was wholly consonant with the star. Catia had ordered it in
+hot haste, in deference to a rumour which had drifted to her ears,
+outstretched in readiness for all such rumours, that, even in that
+relatively small community, it was the custom to put on low-necked
+frocks for dinner. It was the first time that Catia had worn a
+low-necked frock; but she did not find it disconcerting in the least.
+It did disconcert Brenton very much, however. Its abbreviated bodice
+did not fit in with his notions of what was seemly for a rector's wife;
+moreover, to the end of time, he never could find any great degree of
+beauty in a woman's shoulder-blades.
+
+Brenton himself was in his plain clerical costume from which, nowadays,
+he made it his rule never to depart. It was a slightly different
+costume from the one he had worn at first, more distinctly clerical.
+Even in the morning, when it descended to the worldly level of a
+subdued species of pepper-and-salt, it always opened chiefly in the
+back, and a plain silver cross invariably dangled from a cord about his
+neck. As a matter of course, he always kept himself clean-shaven; and
+his scholarly stoop endured still, although the old, self-distrustful
+shamble had strengthened into a manly stride. His eyes were as lustrous
+as of old, his close, up-springing hair lay as thick as ever on his
+crown; but the lower part of his face showed changes, born of the
+years. Still lined, still looking just a little worn, it had gained
+something in decision, gained infinitely more in sensitive refinement.
+In Scott, the native clay was being replaced by translucent marble. In
+Catia, it was hardening to something akin to adamant.
+
+That night, Catia wasted but little time in the preliminary
+conversation with her host who, as a matter of course, had taken her in
+to dinner. Dennison was older than he looked, less impressed than he
+seemed, and clothed impeccably. Catia dismissed him as a youngster of
+scanty account, for he certainly was not formidable to look upon, and
+her studies in the Napoleonic period had never brought her into close
+acquaintance with his really epoch-making monograph. To be sure, she
+had heard some one saying that he golfed extremely well; but as yet her
+social education was far too rudimentary to allow her mind to grasp all
+that that fact connoted. Therefore she turned her attention to Doctor
+Keltridge a thought sooner than the strict laws of table talk allowed.
+Of Doctor Keltridge she had heard already and often. He was their
+senior warden, and she the rector's lady; they could not fail to have
+many points in common. By way of discovering those points quite
+promptly, Catia turned away from Dennison and ruthlessly cut in upon
+Doctor Keltridge's amicable sparring with his other neighbour whom, as
+it chanced, the good doctor had escorted across the portal of this
+world.
+
+"Oh, Doctor Keltridge!" Catia took great pleasure in the spontaneous
+accent she contrived to fling into the words. "I do want--"
+
+Startled, and a little bit surprised at the sudden voice above his
+off-turned shoulder, the doctor bestirred himself and threw out a
+vaguely searching hand. Then, as his hand found nothing before it but a
+bank of flowers, he emitted one of the customary growls with which, to
+his more intimate friends, he disclosed the fact that the motors of his
+ego were temporarily stalled.
+
+"Never is any butter at such a time!" he grumbled. Then he rallied to
+the questioning note in Catia's voice. "What else can I get you,
+madame?" he inquired benignly.
+
+There was an instant's hush about the table. Olive, in the lee of the
+clerical elbow and with young Dolph Dennison by her side, was palpably
+in danger of hysterics. The others, all but Brenton, were well enough
+accustomed to the doctor to await the finish of the interview with no
+small degree of interest. Brenton felt the pause and reddened a little,
+more in marital self-consciousness than from any specific sense of
+conjugal alarm. Indeed, the only two unconscious ones about the table
+were the two protagonists: Catia and the absent-minded doctor, neither
+of whom appeared to be in the least aware of any pause in the general
+talk.
+
+"Nothing at all," Catia told him suavely. "It was only that I
+wanted--"
+
+Again there came the instant's hesitation. Again the doctor employed
+that instant in a frenzied search about the table to discover and make
+good the missing need. This time, though, his success was better. It
+was with a sigh of unmistakable relief that his fingers shut upon the
+salt. His gesture crossed the final words of Catia who had resumed her
+broken phrase, now rounding to a satisfactory conclusion.
+
+"--So much to meet you, Doctor Keltridge. Ever since I heard of you,"
+her eyes looked smilingly into his keen ones which now, a little bit
+inscrutable, were studying her intently from beneath their bushy brows;
+"I have told Scott that I felt quite certain that we should find out we
+had any number of tastes in common."
+
+This time, the pause was not of Catia's making. The doctor let it
+lengthen while, to all of his old friends about the table, it was plain
+that the motors of his ego now were working at full speed. Meanwhile,
+his keen old eyes were still resting upon Catia's up-raised face, and
+in them was the same look an aged sheepdog might bestow upon a youthful
+terrier puppy. Then a smile broke over the keen face, and the stern
+eyes lighted, as the doctor spoke.
+
+"I surely hope so, Mrs. Brenton," he answered her benignantly. "As you
+see, I like horse radish with my oysters. How is it about you?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+
+
+It was not until a good two weeks later that Olive Keltridge came into
+any actual contact with the new rector. At the Dennison dinner, she had
+been too busy in dodging the conversational assaults of the rector's
+lady to pay any great amount of attention to the rector himself. Since
+that time, she had viewed Brenton only with the height of the chancel
+steps between them. However, Olive was conscious that the man
+interested her, even at that distance; and it was with some degree of
+impatience that she confessed her interest to young Dolph Dennison who,
+as a rule, was her safety valve.
+
+"I despise a woman who goes mad about the clergy, Dolph, and I despise
+the way this new rector-man of ours keeps my eyes glued upon him, all
+the time he's preaching. It isn't the quality of his sermons, either;
+it is something inherent in the man himself that causes me to watch
+him."
+
+Dolph Dennison laughed with the callousness of a wayward boy. He was
+years younger than his brother, the professor. Moreover, he had never
+taken any especial pains to expedite the processes of his growing up.
+
+"You'll recover, Olive; I have seen you enthused like this, before. As
+for Brenton, it's a mere case of burbling genteel platitudes in a
+marvellous voice. Even I, though I deplore the platitudes, find my own
+gooseflesh rising in response to his larynx. It's a tremendous asset to
+a man, that! Some day, when I have the time, I'll work it out into a
+series of equations: heart and brain and larynx as the unknown
+quantities to be properly equated, so much brain for so much, or so
+little, larynx. Thanks, no. I won't come in. I'm late for luncheon now.
+You will be at the Evans tea, to-morrow afternoon?"
+
+Nodding cheerily, young Dennison went on his way, leaving Olive to
+ponder upon the accuracy of his diagnosis. Was it only larynx, after
+all? Or had the new young rector something back of it, something that
+singled him out from the ruck of men, and held him up as worthy of
+attention? Olive's eyes grew thoughtful, for an instant, at the
+question. Then the laugh came back into them again, the while she
+thought of Mrs. Brenton.
+
+It was only the next afternoon that Brenton came by appointment to call
+on Doctor Keltridge. There were certain minor matters to be discussed
+between the rector and his senior warden, before it appeared really
+wise to bring them up in open meeting. To both men, it seemed possible
+to discuss them with greater freedom from interruption at the doctor's
+house than at the rectory. Therefore had been the appointment between
+them.
+
+According to his custom, Brenton kept his appointment to the very
+letter, and the clocks were striking three, when the Keltridge maid
+deposited him in the Keltridge drawing-room. The doctor showed himself
+less punctual, however, and a good quarter of an hour elapsed before
+steps were heard in the hall outside. Moreover, before Brenton had time
+to question to himself the weight of those same steps, the door was
+pushed open to admit, not a keen-faced and grizzly doctor, but a
+totally apologetic Olive.
+
+"Mr. Brenton?" she said, with a slight lift, as of question, in her
+voice. "Really, I am so penitent at the message I am bringing you. The
+maid told me you were here. Then, after a while, she came back again
+and told me she couldn't find my father anywhere."
+
+With a courteous little gesture, Brenton interrupted her apology and
+half rose from his chair.
+
+"Really, it's not at all a matter for apology, Miss Keltridge. I can
+come again, some other day. Your father is a busy man, I know."
+
+But Olive stayed him with scanty ceremony.
+
+"No; wait, Mr. Brenton. I hadn't finished my tale. Besides, when you
+have lived in town a little longer, you'll know that nobody ever does
+apologize for my father; we all revel in his dear old absurdities. Sit
+down, please. He will be here before very long."
+
+Brenton did sit down, the while he suppressed a vague question regarding
+the filial nature of the word _absurdities_. Then he yielded to the
+merriment in Olive's eyes, and laughed outright and boyishly.
+
+"I've heard something of the sort already, Miss Keltridge," he
+confessed. "What was it, this time?"
+
+For an instant, Olive paused, astonished at the change which had come
+over her companion. His clerical veneer had fallen from him; the man
+beneath was singularly human, likable, and as simple as Dolph Dennison
+himself.
+
+"This time? I went to see, went to the laboratory, though the maid had
+told me he wasn't in there. She had knocked twice; then she had opened
+the door to look in. At first, I agreed with her. Then I heard a little
+noise, over in a corner behind the table. There on the floor, the flat
+floor, sat my father, sixty-five years old. His hair was all on end,
+and his cheek was smudged with something yellow, and he was as happy as
+a baby in a sand pile. Doing?" Olive made a helpless little gesture.
+"How should I know? I'm no student of germs. He had a row of glass pans
+in front of him, with hideous messes in them, and he appeared to be
+sounding the depths of iniquity in them with a small glass divining
+rod."
+
+Then their eyes met above the finished story, and together the two of
+them burst out laughing, like a pair of merry children.
+
+"You think he will become visible, in course of time?" Brenton asked
+her.
+
+She shook her head, as she laughed again.
+
+"I trust so, Mr. Brenton; but, of course, nobody ever can predict. He
+knows you are here. At least," swiftly she amended her phrase; "he did
+know it. How long the fact stays by him is another question. If you
+were only a germ, now----" She surveyed him dubiously. "You wouldn't
+care to go into the laboratory?" she asked him.
+
+A sudden light flashed up into Scott Brenton's face, the dazzle of a
+flame long buried, never entirely to be extinguished.
+
+"If I might! Wouldn't it disturb him, though?"
+
+But Olive had seen the lighting of the quiet face, and her curiosity
+was aroused. What was there in the mere mention of a laboratory that
+could so transform a humdrum little rector into a thing of fire? That
+it was the laboratory, Olive never stopped to question. She was far too
+sane, too used to the tame-tabby-cat propensities of youthful rectors,
+to imagine for a moment that the enthusiasm had come out of the chance
+to escape from her society. Therefore she decided that, for the
+present, she would keep this particular rector to herself, on the
+off-chance of discovering the real source of his enthusiasm. Her
+knowledge of her father's habits assured her, beyond doubt, that later
+on, much later, there would still be plenty of time for the laboratory
+visit. Accordingly, she answered Brenton's question with flat
+discouragement.
+
+"Probably," she told him quite uncompromisingly. "However, it is good
+for him to be disturbed, once in a while, even if he doesn't always
+take it so very nicely."
+
+With palpable regret, Brenton settled back again in his chair.
+
+"Oh, well, I'd hate to be disturbing him," he said politely.
+
+"Better stay here and wait," Olive advised him. "It can't be long
+before he comes, and some of those glass pans were very awful."
+
+"Do you think so? One never really minds a laboratory smell, after the
+first whiff of it. It seems to go into the system once for all, at the
+start. After," this time, the regret was even more palpable; "one
+always rather longs to get back into it."
+
+Olive smiled.
+
+"So I have noticed, with my father." Then her accent changed, grew less
+conventional. "You have had it, then, Mr. Brenton?"
+
+"Of another sort. I had three years in a chemical laboratory, when I
+was in college," he told her simply.
+
+"Really? And you liked it?"
+
+His voice dropped by a whole octave, thrilled with a new resonance
+which, for some reason that she could not analyze then or after, set
+the girl's nerves all a-quiver. It was the voice of a man who, for the
+first time, is confessing aloud his master passion.
+
+"It made life over for me," he said gravely.
+
+"Then--Forgive me, if I have no right to ask the question. But one
+generally keeps on with a thing like that." Olive was painfully aware
+that her curiosity, however she wrapped it up in apologies, was most
+unjustifiable.
+
+Scott Brenton, however, did not appear to find it so. Too simple-minded
+and downright to obtrude his personal history, he also was too
+simple-minded to conceal it.
+
+"I should have kept on with it, at any cost," he answered; "only for
+the sake of my mother. She was a widow without much money; she was
+giving all she had to educate me, and her heart was set on--something
+else."
+
+If Olive noted the little pause, she had at least the super-feminine
+tact to ignore it.
+
+"Your priesthood?"
+
+He nodded slowly.
+
+"After a fashion,--yes."
+
+This time, the pause seemed to her entirely natural.
+
+"She must be very happy now," she answered. "Saint Peter's is a dear
+old church, mellow enough in its traditions to make up for its
+hopelessly new architecture; and I am sure you'll love this sleepy
+town."
+
+But it was plain to her that Brenton, quite oblivious to her words, was
+pursuing his own train of thought. Out of it he spoke.
+
+"My mother died, two years ago, Miss Keltridge."
+
+Her reply came promptly.
+
+"How glad you must be that she lived to know that her wishes had been
+carried out!"
+
+This time, the pause was a good deal longer. Without Olive's in the
+least suspecting it, the invincible honour of the man before her was
+struggling with his reticence. Should he absorb a praise to which he
+had no right; or should he thrust his confidence upon her at this early
+stage of their acquaintance? Honour won out.
+
+"Only in part," he said a little sadly. "Really, Miss Keltridge,
+there's no especial reason I should bore you with all this, except that
+I don't like to be caught, sailing under false colours. I wanted to be
+a chemist of some sort or other, something experimental and
+theoretical, if I could; and they told me that I could. Sometimes I
+wish they hadn't. It would have simplified things a good deal, if I
+never had found it out. And my mother, all the time, had been denying
+herself in order to prepare me to preach the bluest sort of Calvinism.
+I found that it was going to break her heart, if I gave up the plan, so
+I gave up the chemistry, instead, and took the preaching.
+Unfortunately, though, in the meantime, the chemistry--and some other
+things--had made me also give up the Calvinism. And so, in the end of
+all things, even my preaching seemed to her a wretched compromise."
+
+His eyes were fixed upon the carpet, and he could not see her face; but
+the gentleness in her young voice set his pulses pounding. In all his
+life up to this hour, such gentleness never had been meant for him. His
+mother was too stern; Catia too metallic. As for other women, he had
+never been in sufficiently short range of them, psychologically
+speaking, to be aware whether they meant to be gentle to him or not.
+
+"I think," Olive was saying; "that she understands it better now.
+Anyway, you always will be glad of the choice you made."
+
+His eyes still on the carpet at his feet, Scott Brenton spoke moodily.
+
+"I wish I knew," he said.
+
+And then he was aghast at the consciousness that, before this
+comparative stranger, and a girl at that, he had taken down the
+barriers before the secret of his disappointment.
+
+Happily, however, Olive was serenely unconscious of either barriers or
+secret. Instead, she was intent on preventing any retro-active regrets
+upon the part of a devoted son.
+
+"All creeds are a good deal alike, just as they say all roads lead to
+Rome," she reminded him, with a curious crossing of Mrs. Brenton's
+mental trail. "The preaching, after all, is the main thing, that and
+the priestly life; it doesn't make much difference whether you wear a
+stole, or a gown and bands. And as for the chemistry," she laughed
+lightly; "if you ever feel your work in that was wasted, just go and
+talk to the head professor here. Only just the other day, I heard him
+laying down the law to father, claiming that his laboratory was the
+only open door to logic, the only training school where one can find
+out whether his elements can be combined safely, or whether they will
+explode and, what's a good deal more to the point, explode him with
+them."
+
+The laugh came back to Brenton's face. Once more Olive wondered at its
+charm.
+
+"There's something in his theory," he admitted.
+
+"Everything, according to his notion. The last I heard, the dear man
+apparently was trying to get himself annexed to the literary courses.
+He declared in open faculty meeting, the other day, that a proper
+training in chemistry would kill off a good fifty per cent of the
+modern novels. The authors would realize the explosiveness of their
+plots before they touched them, and wouldn't waste months on months of
+work, brewing what, in the end of it all, was nothing more than a mere
+flash in the pan. He was still elaborating his theory, when the
+President called him to order, ready for the motion to adjourn." Then
+she harked back to her former theme. "You must see the laboratory here,
+Mr. Brenton, if you care for such things. Girls? Oh, yes, of course;
+but you'll soon get past regarding that as any handicap. In fact,
+according to Professor Opdyke, it is one of the best equipped
+laboratories in the country."
+
+But Brenton's attention had wandered from the fact, caught by one of
+the minor details which surrounded it.
+
+"Professor Opdyke?" he echoed a little blankly.
+
+"Yes. You have met him?"
+
+"Not here. Not at all, in fact. The name is so uncommon that I am quite
+sure. And yet--"
+
+It was plain to Olive that Brenton was struggling with some
+half-forgotten memory, striving to bring it forth to light, to link it
+with the present; or, failing that, at least with something tangible in
+his past life. And yet, the blurring of his memory was not too
+inexplicable. Reed Opdyke still remembered Brenton clearly, still
+regretted the apparent waste of some of his more brilliant
+possibilities. Scott Brenton, on the other hand, had totally dismissed
+Reed Opdyke from his mind. In the contact between the two of them, the
+one had stepped up, the other down; and, as so often happens, the
+truer, the more lasting picture is the one gained from the upper level.
+Moreover, Brenton's later life, and most especially the summer which
+had followed the ending of his association with Reed Opdyke, had been
+so very strenuous as to obliterate by far the greater number of his
+earlier contacts.
+
+Then suddenly memory stirred in its sleep, stretched itself, awakened.
+
+"Did Professor Opdyke have a son?" he asked, with a new eagerness which
+was wholly alien to the one concerning his bit of autobiography.
+
+Olive smiled at his phrasing.
+
+"He did; I trust he still does," she answered; "though, with a mining
+man, one never can be quite sure. Why? Did you know Reed?"
+
+The colour came into Brenton's cheeks, as he blurted out the totally
+forgotten truth.
+
+"I adored him, all my last two years at college."
+
+"Really? Yes, he is Professor Opdyke's son; and people who have seen
+him lately tell me he is more adorable than ever."
+
+"When have you seen him?" For something in Olive's accent made Brenton
+realize that there was no necessity for any preliminary question
+concerning the fact that she knew Opdyke well.
+
+"Not since the year of his graduation. In fact, I was at his commencement.
+Why," and suddenly her eyes gathered into focus; "I remember you then,
+Mr. Brenton. Reed showed you to me as----" Then, all at once, she
+faltered and her colour came.
+
+He strove to help her out of the abyss into which she so unwittingly
+had fallen.
+
+"One of the waiters at his eating club, and popularly known there as
+'Reed's Parson'?" he asked her, with a little smile which sought to
+cover the sting that came to him with the memory.
+
+But Olive shook her head.
+
+"No; not that at all. It was one of the Might-Have-Beens, he called
+you," she said, with brave downrightness. But, afterwards, when she
+thought the matter over, she wondered whether she had bettered it, or
+made it worse. In any case, she went on a little hastily. "Since then,
+as it happens, I never once have been here, when Reed has been at home.
+Of course, he has been back here now and then; but once I was in
+London, and in New York, the other times."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+She shook her head again.
+
+"That is the hardest sort of question to answer, for he is always on
+the wing. He went in for mining engineering, and is making quite a
+record as consulting engineer. It's copper, I think, he consults about;
+anyway, no one ever can predict where he will be heard from next.
+Really, if you knew him, you must meet Professor Opdyke. The dear old
+man is bursting with pride in his only son; he talks about him by the
+hour at a time, if we let him. The trouble is that we all are so cloyed
+with hearing about Reed's virtues and Reed's triumphs that we have a
+tendency to run away before the paternal downpour commences. A new pair
+of ears will be a veritable godsend to his father. He and my father are
+the greatest sort of chums, and--" Suddenly Olive paused and began to
+look distinctly uneasy. "By the way, Mr. Brenton, where is my father? I
+really think that, in mercy to your patience, I'd better go and jog his
+memory once more."
+
+And jog his memory she did, and with such success that, this time,
+Doctor Keltridge put in a tardy and apologetic appearance. However,
+when, smiling guiltily at his own sins of omission, he came to greet
+his guest, he came alone. Olive, her hospitable duty done, had
+vanished, to return no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN
+
+
+Saint Peter's Parish was unique in all New England. The trails of old
+and new in its experience crossed and crisscrossed at every point,
+causing a long succession of eccentricities which endeared themselves
+to the minds of the oldest inhabitants. However, even the oldest
+inhabitants breathed a deep sigh of relief, when finally they were
+housed in the brand-new church up beside the college campus, a real
+stone church, with transepts and painted windows and choir-stalls
+within, and a cloister and a grand tall tower without. The ramshackle
+old wooden church had been dear to them, had even remained dear to them
+after the railroad had laid down its tracks under their very eaves; but
+they were fretted by the crudely caustic comments of strangers coming
+to the town, and they were still more fretted when the puffing,
+screeching Sunday trains drowned the voice of the good old rector whose
+mannerly traditions forbade his puffing and screeching in his turn.
+
+He had been a dear old rector, rotund and pompous; and his surplice had
+been fully as long and voluminous as a Mother Hubbard nightie. Possibly
+it was on that account, to equalize the demand for muslin, that, in
+those same old days, the choir had worn no surplices at all, but had
+been accustomed to come tramping into church in all the bravery of sack
+coats and violent haberdashery. Indeed, upon the part of certain of the
+congregation, there had been a tendency to regard it as a finger-post
+to Rome, when some younger member of the vestry suggested putting the
+ban on scarlet neckties. Saint Peter's Parish was set like a holy
+beacon in the very midst of a valley which was tainted with heresies
+Arian and unspeakable, tainted so thoroughly that the ritualistic
+development of Saint Peter's was delayed for decades upon that account.
+
+Later, Saint Peter's became far wiser in its generation. Its policy had
+been to extend a cordial welcome to all men of whatever creed, and its
+early fathers had felt that it was surer to attract the more unstable
+of its neighbours, if it held its threshold at the common level of them
+all. In course of time, however, wisdom dawned and broadened to a
+perfect day of psychological common sense. A theological reaction, of
+whatever sort, was bound in the last analysis to be a matter of a
+sudden leap, not of a deliberate slide. One either took a veritable
+ski-jump into the next church but three, or else one merely stayed
+where one was, and fretted about the details of the service.
+
+It was now a good twenty years and more since Saint Peter's had
+abandoned its old barracks of a church and moved up town into its new
+quarters. As a matter of course, it had settled down as close as
+possible to the campus. A student congregation might be a bit unstable,
+taken as a parish; but it was distinctly lucrative, when it came to the
+point of counting up the offertory. Furthermore, as result of its
+Sunday-morning habits of arising, it was prone to turn in at the first
+church door that offered.
+
+Nowadays on Sunday mornings, Saint Peter's rector had no monopoly of
+surplices. The choir, discreetly garbed and outwardly reverential,
+warbled early English settings to the hymns, the while they came
+striding slowly up the aisle in a species of churchly goose-step that
+demanded a pause on each foot, to prevent the physical march outrunning
+the musical one. Nowadays, too, there was daily celebration; that is,
+when any one was sufficiently energetic to get up and get into church
+in time. What happened upon those other days, when the rector was
+abandoned to the rows of empty pews, was still a matter of profane
+conjecture. Discussed in whispers, it was agreed to be a subject best
+left to the disclosing hand of time.
+
+Into this elaborate and decorative harness, Scott Brenton was now
+breaking his young strength, his young ambition. In his old parish in
+the hills, it had been a question of preaching the best sermons that he
+could and looking out for his people in the intervals, rather than of
+forms and ceremonies and intonations of the Nicene Creed. In accepting
+the Bishop's intimation that Saint Peter's Parish would extend to him a
+welcoming hand, he had thought singularly little about the outward
+trappings of his priesthood. Catia knew it all; but she held her peace.
+The Bishop also had held his peace, and a little bit for the same
+reason that Catia had done. He knew the theological history of Scott
+Brenton; he knew that, like all half-broken colts, he easily might shy
+at first sight of the harness; yet, once with the harness on and fitted
+to his back, he would fall to work in earnest and pull steadily with
+the best of them. And it was the pulling that the Bishop wished, not
+the mere jingling of the farthingale. Under the last incumbent, Saint
+Peter's had been running down a little. It was not in all respects an
+easy parish; and Brenton, young, earnest and as magnetic as he was
+self-distrustful, was the very man to build it up. Nevertheless, the
+Bishop saw to it that Scott Brenton should never attend a service at
+Saint Peter's, until his acceptance of the parish was settled past all
+gainsaying.
+
+From the first morning of his reading service at Saint Peter's, Brenton
+had been aware that he was opening a fresh chapter of his life. In the
+old hillside parish, there had been things to do and souls to save.
+Here, it seemed to him that all the souls had been saved prenatally. As
+for the things to do, these people were too critical, too self-reliant
+to take kindly to the intimate sort of ministrations in which, of old,
+he had delighted. For the future, it would be the quality of his
+sermons that counted most, rather than his personal contact with his
+people.
+
+The congregation seemed to him conglomerate, a jumble of conflicting
+elements. There were the old, old residents and their offspring, people
+who squabbled violently among themselves as to whose ancestor came
+aboard the _Mayflower_ first, and which in what capacity. There were
+the mediaeval spinsters who always reach their best development in the
+semi-small New England town, spinsters who have clubs and theories, and
+yet play golf, and frivol delightfully above their luncheon tables. And
+there were college girls in hordes, alert young things, critical alike
+of evil and of good, of the hang of the back of a surplice where the
+shoulders stoop a little, and of the turning of the final phrases that
+naturally lead up to the _And now_--To Scott Brenton, looking down
+upon the students in the congregation, his first Sunday morning at
+Saint Peter's, their befeathered hats and their intent young faces
+seemed to him the masking labels upon a store of frozen dynamite.
+Thawed, it might serve for any amount of useful tunneling; it might go
+off explosively in the open, at almost any given instant.
+
+Taken all in all, it was upon the student fraction of his congregation
+that Brenton looked with greatest interest; it was to them, in greatest
+measure, that the best of his sermons preached themselves. The phrase
+is no slipshod inversion of the fact. The best of all sermons do preach
+themselves, both in their original inception and their ultimate
+delivery. All the so-called preacher does about it is to give the
+intermediate polishing to his projectile, and then to hold himself
+still, while it is going off, and watch what happens, by way of
+preparation for aiming his next shot.
+
+As a matter of course, with a target so unstable as a student audience,
+Brenton by no means hit the bull's-eye every time. That he did hit it
+occasionally, however, argues no mean ability, no paltry knowledge of
+youthful human nature. Over their Sunday dinners, the girls discussed
+his sermons with increasing vigour. The echoes of these discussions,
+coming to Brenton's ears, set him to preaching with increasing
+conscientiousness. However, there still was salvation for him; it was
+his sermons that he took so much in earnest, and not himself, the
+preacher.
+
+But, although it was upon his student hearers that Scott Brenton tossed
+down, broadcast and unsaving, the best of all he had within himself, it
+was among the permanent residents of Saint Peter's that his real work
+was supposed to be done. He did that work most faithfully; he showed
+himself both tireless and tactful in his arrangement of the parish
+mechanism, in his gathering up and straightening and knotting here and
+there the threads his predecessor had flung down in a tangled heap.
+Nevertheless, his heart was in the other end of his work, not for any
+individual interest in the different girls; but because his whole
+instinct told him that here was the dynamic force of the whole
+organization, that the rest of it was curiously static. Under those
+befeathered hats were eager brains which weighed their theology and
+measured it, not took it ready made. It was for him to serve it out to
+them in such a guise that, weighed, they should not find it wanting.
+
+Catia, on the other hand, looked upon the student end of her husband's
+parish with disapproving eyes. The girls annoyed her by their cocksure
+alertness, their little air of being primed, ready for any emergency
+that chanced to offer. They vexed her by their manifest absorption in
+her husband; they vexed her yet more by their inexplicable lack of
+interest in herself.
+
+Upon the older and more stable fraction of the parish, however, Catia
+lavished an interested affection which would have seemed well-nigh
+maternal, had it not been for the care she took to emphasize the gulf
+in age which yawned between herself and certain of the individuals who
+made up its list. She studied the list with no slight degree of care.
+By the end of their first month in the new parish, she knew to a nicety
+how the line of local social precedence ordered itself, where, at any
+point in the procession, town must yield to gown, or the reverse. She
+knew the lineage and history of all the wardens and their wives, and
+then of all the vestry-men; she even cultivated a nodding acquaintance
+with their family skeletons, and learned to recognize the seals upon
+the doors that, as a rule, hid them from public view. She knew the
+hobbies of the average prosperous member at large of the flock
+ecclesiastical, and made a series of elaborate calculations regarding
+the intersecting social orbits of those same members. As for the other,
+lesser members of the congregation, she had an especial kind of smile,
+half of sweetness, half of deprecation, that she bestowed upon each one
+of them in turn; but she never made the slightest effort to separate
+them, one from another, in her mind, or to return any of their calls.
+To Catia's astute brain, the duty of a rector's lady consisted in
+helping her husband up, not on.
+
+It was at about this epoch, too, that Catia ceased to be Catia and
+became Kathryn. In some respects, the most remarkable thing about the
+change was the suddenness with which it was announced to Scott.
+
+A dozen of them had been dining at the Keltridges', one night, six
+months or so after Brenton had come to take charge of the congregation
+of Saint Peter's. It was essentially a church-warden kind of dinner,
+with all the other wardens and their wives to meet the rector and his
+lady, the kind of dinner that one gives and goes to, out of stern
+necessity, when, all the time, one longs for something just a little
+less made up by rule of thumb. The one exception to the prevailing
+ecclesiastical flavour, that night, was in the person of a local
+novelist who, albeit suave and very bald, wrote novels of the raucous,
+woolly West. Moreover, like all other novelists, he rejoiced in talking
+shop. Accordingly, with the utmost expedition, he dragged the talk
+around to the law regarding the choice of names.
+
+"Of course," he expounded, for the benefit of whom it might concern;
+"the first thing I always do, when I go to work, is to name my
+characters. It's the hardest thing in the world to do--properly. You
+can stick any sort of name to any sort of character, I know; but that's
+not naming them. Not at all. The name must be a label; it must fit like
+a glove, and yet the character must be fitted to it. And most of the
+names I find are so trite."
+
+"Likewise the characters," Dolph Dennison assured him, _sotto voce_.
+
+Dolph, by way of his older brother, who was vestryman, might be termed
+sub-ecclesiastical. However, in any case, he would have been sure of a
+seat at the Keltridge dinner, even if all the other guests had been
+archbishops. It needs at least one such irresponsible youngster to act
+as appetizer for the solid things before him.
+
+Only Olive heard his comment. As a matter of course, Dolph's place was
+next to Olive. Long since, discerning hostesses had discovered that
+therein lay the only path to peace. Otherwise, Dolph either sulked
+palpably; or else ignored his other neighbour and shouted all his talk
+across the table into Olive's ears. Not that either Dolph or Olive had
+any notion of being at all in love with each other. It was merely that
+things struck them the same way at the same instant, and that Dolph,
+being young and a good deal spoiled, could see no reason against a
+prompt exchange of comments on the fact. Therefore, for the peace of
+the other people at the table, it had become a universal local law
+that, no matter who took Olive Keltridge out, Dolph Dennison should be
+placed at her other side.
+
+Olive, then, heard Dolph's comment and, what was infinitely worse, she
+feared the novelist had heard it, too. Therefore, to save the feelings
+of the bald little man, she flung herself into the talk.
+
+"I see exactly what you mean," she told him. "Your idea is that, when
+you have conceived a character that is wholly original--"
+
+"Ahem!" Dolph strangled suddenly.
+
+But Olive continued, without pause for flinching, for now the bald
+little novelist was facing her intently, and it was plain, from the
+tentative waggling of his beard, that he would mount his hobby and be
+off again, if she gave him so much as a comma's breadth by which to
+creep back into the talk.
+
+"Wholly original," she repeated sternly; "that it must be very trying
+to be obliged to descend to the every day of things, and name her
+Mamie."
+
+There came a peal of laughter at the accent with which Olive had
+contrived to endow the name. The peal was cut short, however, by the
+fussy accent of the little novelist.
+
+"You have hit the nail on the head, Miss Olive, distinctly on the
+head," he assured her, with a bow and smile so suave as to be devoid of
+meaning. "Really," and Olive felt as if she were a young child and he
+were offering her a stick of candy; "it was a very smart little tap.
+Yes, as you say, a Mamie is an anticlimax to one's best endeavours.
+Now, if all the ladies," Olive had a momentary longing to hurl a plate
+in his unctuous direction; "only were blessed with names like yours, we
+poor novelists would never be devoid of sources for our inspiration."
+
+"Encore!" remarked Dolph Dennison, with admirable gravity.
+
+Once again Olive sought to save the situation, as well as to remove the
+subject of the talk from resting solely on herself.
+
+"If that is all you want," she answered lightly; "you surely will find
+Mrs. Brenton's name offering you all sorts of inspiration, much better
+than anything mine could give."
+
+"Mrs. Brenton?" The little novelist was palpably uncertain as to whom
+the name belonged. He was not only Unitarian by theology, but
+inattentive by profession; and, moreover, he had but just returned from
+a copy-hunting trip in the direction of his raucous West.
+
+"Yes." Olive made signals of distress in the direction of the rector's
+wife who was bending above her salad, with every appearance of anxious
+absorption in her tour of discovery among its elements. Her colour
+betrayed her, though, and Olive judged it would be the part of wisdom
+to drag her by the heels into the talk. "Mrs. Brenton, I am just
+telling Mr. Prather what a benefactor you ought to be considered,
+according to his notion about names. Surely, yours is unusual enough to
+win his full approval."
+
+Even as she spoke, Olive realized the vapidness of her words and was
+ashamed of them. An instant later, though, her shame exchanged itself
+for astonishment.
+
+The rector's lady raised her brows, and spoke with studied
+carelessness.
+
+"Really, Miss Keltridge," she said calmly; "there is nothing so very
+unusual in the name of Kathryn."
+
+"Kathryn!" Olive fairly stuttered over her reply, for she saw Scott
+Brenton's eyes turn to his wife, and she read amazement in them,
+amazement and something else that was dangerously akin to contempt. "I
+thought your name was Catia, Mrs. Brenton."
+
+But Kathryn Brenton laid down her fork, as though the salad had ceased
+to interest her. Then she spoke, and her accent conveyed the same
+impression as concerned the conversation.
+
+"Oh, no; Catia is just a little nickname. That is all. My name is
+really Kathryn."
+
+And then, for an instant and to her lasting shame, Olive Keltridge's
+glance sought that of Brenton. Before the hurt and abased look in his
+deep gray eyes, her own eyes dropped, ashamed and pitiful. What right
+had she, in a moment so tragic, albeit so very, very petty, to spy upon
+him in his disappointment? What right to obtrude her honest sympathy
+upon his secret pain?
+
+She dropped her eyes, then, promptly. None the less, Scott Brenton
+realized that, alone of all the group about the table, Olive Keltridge
+had recognized both elements: the secret, and the pain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE
+
+
+It was Catia, then, or, rather, Kathryn, who kept a weather eye upon
+the social powers of the parish. Brenton was too busy doing other
+things. Somebody, though, she argued, must look out for the personal
+end of life, as well as for the theological. Else, the parish would
+fall to pieces about their ears. Brenton might be giving them the bread
+of life; but man should not live by bread alone. He needed an
+occasional cup of afternoon tea to wash it down. Therefore Kathryn
+revised her social balance sheets often and with the utmost care.
+
+Out of deference to what Kathryn was still pleased to term her
+husband's cloth, the Brentons promptly had been received into the
+inmost circles of the college set, an honour which they shared with
+Prather, the fussy little novelist. Kathryn liked the novelist; he was
+such an unctuous, eager little man, so redolent of the elements that
+went into his careful grooming. She even tried in vain to read his
+novels; but they proved too much for her. She explained to him that his
+local colour was so brilliant that it dazzled her; but the ignoble
+truth was that she found it boring, although her letters going out of
+town were splashed thickly with his name.
+
+At the faculty wives Kathryn looked askance. They most of them knew
+things and they wore their clothes as if they were accustomed to them.
+Nevertheless, they seemed to her a little bit old-fashioned. Some of
+the grown-up daughters, the ones who had not been in college, she liked
+a little better. Nevertheless, Kathryn's attempts at closest
+comradeship were with certain of the young instructors. She told
+herself that she was mothering them, giving their homeless selves an
+outlook on domestic life. What the young instructors told, would be
+better for the editing. Indeed, it was somewhat edited and pruned of
+its finest flowers of speech, out of loyalty to Brenton whom they one
+and all admired exceedingly.
+
+Brenton himself, meanwhile, though liking those jovial youngsters who,
+in reality, were of his age and epoch, was finding his most satisfying
+intimacy in the friendship of two of the older men: Doctor Eustace
+Keltridge, and Professor Opdyke.
+
+Of the two of them, both mellow men of learning and of kindly humour,
+Doctor Keltridge was easily first choice. Before Scott Brenton had been
+a month over Saint Peter's Parish, he had fallen into the habit of
+dropping in upon the doctor at all sorts of hours and upon all sorts of
+pretexts, now smoking with him in the library and discussing things
+ecclesiastical, now following him into the laboratory, to hang above
+the trays of cultures, or the charts of perverse fever cases, while the
+doctor expounded and predicted, laying down the law with voice and fist
+and trenchant word. He saw Olive, as a rule, when he was passing in and
+out. Sometimes they merely nodded from afar, sometimes they had a
+little conversation. It was always as immaterial as possible, yet it
+never failed to have a little flavour of personal and friendly
+understanding.
+
+Next to the absent-minded and erratic doctor, Brenton's loyalty was
+given to Professor Opdyke. At the very first, the consciousness that
+the gray-haired professor was father to his old-time idol had made all
+the difference; but, after a time, that fact sank into insignificance
+beside the personality of the man himself. Never was any artist more
+devoted to his medium, whether that medium were water colours or
+progressive harmonies, than was Professor Opdyke to his balances and
+his blow-pipes, to his effervescent mixtures and to his most unholy
+smells. His laboratory was his studio, a place apart from all the
+outside world, the threshold where he was content to stand and knock,
+waiting in perfect, reverential patience until the mysterious door
+ahead of him should open just a very little wider. To the outward eye,
+he was languid, indifferent, a little cynical and prone to boredom.
+Underneath it, though, the fires of his enthusiasm, of his ambition to
+advance, not his own career, but the sum total of scientific knowledge:
+this fire was burning at white heat. Indeed, it cost him something to
+bank down the flame upon the side of his nature which lay open to the
+general view. His somewhat cynical humour was the material which he
+selected for the banking.
+
+Professor Opdyke almost never was betrayed into the sin of talking
+shop. Upon the rare occasions that he gave himself the privilege, save
+to his classes, he insisted upon but one congenial hearer, and that
+that one should be with him behind closed doors. More and more often,
+as the second winter of his acquaintance with Brenton went on, he chose
+Brenton as the one hearer he allowed himself. This was partly by reason
+of Brenton's interest in Reed, for, whatever his habit with his chemistry,
+it must be confessed that Professor Opdyke talked in season and out
+about his son. Partly, too, it came by way of Professor Mansfield whose
+introduction of Brenton would have been the _Open, Sesame_ to any
+sanctum in America. Most of all, though, it came from Brenton himself,
+from the young rector's manifest enthusiasm for all that went under the
+name of chemistry, an enthusiasm based, as Professor Opdyke made prompt
+discovery, upon no mere smattering of knowledge.
+
+Bit by bit, then, the professor lowered the guard he had built up
+before his holy places, relaxed the vigilance of his watch upon them
+lest they should be invaded by the careless feet of those that did not
+comprehend. Scott Brenton did comprehend. To him, experimenting was an
+act of reverence, not a deed of idle curiosity. The world-laws were, to
+him, full of purpose, albeit only half revealed; and blessed was he who
+should assist in the revealing.
+
+Brenton, listening, talking in his turn, sometimes questioning,
+sometimes uttering a trenchant bit of argument, felt the old impulses
+stirring within him, felt the old love of science renewing its hold
+upon his heart and brain. Not that he regretted his holy calling; at
+least, not yet. It was a goodly privilege to be allowed to set forth to
+all men the modern, elastic gospel of good will coupled with a bowing
+acquaintance with the sciences. Much might be done, that way, he told
+himself, while steadily he disregarded the voices whispering in his
+ears that he was offering his parishioners a set of pretty painted toys
+instead of the rugged, vital facts of universal law. Still, the toys
+were prettier and vastly more refined than were the old-time goblins of
+his mother's day, the goblins marched to and fro persistently by half a
+score of Parson Wheelers in their time. Those were monstrosities,
+palpably of human creation and yet in the likeness of no mortal thing.
+The toys he offered to his people were at least shaped and coloured
+into dainty imitation of existing facts. So far as he helped on the
+substitution, he was a benefactor to all mankind. And yet, it would
+have been good to bare his hands and arms, and with them grasp and
+wrestle with the naked facts, elusive facts, despite their ruggedness.
+Nevertheless, he bravely smothered his desires. He even, and to
+himself, professed to ignore the way they multiplied, after an
+afternoon in the society of Professor Opdyke. However, ignore them as
+he would and did, they burnt within him with an increasing fierceness,
+burnt away, indeed, some of the scaffolding upon which his system of
+theology had reared itself.
+
+More than a little of this conflagration the professor realized. Also
+he realized its potential danger. If the scaffolding began to go, what
+then? Would the flames blaze up all the higher on the heap of fallen
+ruins; or would the ice water which, in the Parson Wheelers, had taken
+the place of good red blood, spurt from the veins of this, their
+latter-day descendant, and quench the fires before they reached the
+superstructure of his faith? The professor realized to the full,
+moreover, his personal accountability in the matter. None the less, he
+could never quite decide where the real right lay. Should he ignore the
+possible loss to science or should he help on the probable loss to
+theologic eloquence? He shook his head at the question. Like all true
+scientists, he must hold himself impartial. Asked, however, he surely
+had no moral right to withhold facts from a mature mind like that of
+Scott Brenton. Facts he would give, and plainly, and without
+modification or omission. There, though, he would stop. The inferences
+which Brenton should draw out from them should be no concern of his.
+
+And Scott Brenton who, from the start, had had a trick of drawing
+inferences to suit himself, was all the better pleased on that account.
+
+By degrees, then, the intimacy between the two men waxed strong. The
+one imparted things; the other absorbed them greedily. As time went on,
+there were few days in the week which did not find them together at
+some hour and place or other: in the laboratory, in the rector's study
+at the church, on the golf links, or scouring the hill and valley roads
+that stretched out, a lovely network to enmesh the town.
+
+One such walk had been scheduled for a day in April, a day when the
+whole physical world is a fragrant commentary on the truths of
+resurrection. The professor, it had been agreed, should call for
+Brenton at two. At half-past two, he had not appeared; and Brenton,
+loath to lose his half-day in the open, set out in search of him.
+
+As a matter of course, the search began in the outer laboratory where,
+in all probability, the professor had been hindered by a student
+grappling either with conscience or a condition, perhaps, indeed, with
+both combined. Such things had happened more than once in Brenton's
+experience of the department. The fact that it was a girls' college,
+though, made the earlier alternative more probable than was the later
+one. Brenton smiled a little, as he thanked his lucky stars that it was
+not the custom of the college girls to haunt their spiritual pilots as
+insistently as some of them haunted their mental ones. Smiling still,
+he doffed his hat before the dozen girls in the outer laboratory, while
+he looked about him. Professor Opdyke was not there. After an instant's
+hesitation, Brenton crossed the intervening strip of floor and tapped
+upon the door leading to the private laboratory beyond.
+
+"Come in."
+
+The voice was more than a trifle husky; and the professor's chair was
+carefully planted with its high back to the light. The professor was in
+the chair, and bent above the table which, Brenton's quick eye noted,
+was bare of anything that looked like work. As Brenton's face appeared
+in the doorway, Professor Opdyke looked up at him in a vague
+uncertainty which all at once changed to a guilty recognition.
+
+"Brenton! I quite forgot. I'm very sorry," he said; but his voice
+lacked all resonance. "The fact is, I've had news from Reed."
+
+"Bad?" The curt monosyllable was kinder than many words.
+
+The professor nodded.
+
+"There's been an accident."
+
+"He's not--" Brenton faltered at the grisly word, not so much in mercy
+to the father, seated there before him, as because the old-time love
+for that father's son seemed to rise up and catch him by the throat and
+strangle him.
+
+The Professor gave a long, shuddering sigh, the sigh of a woman verging
+on hysterics.
+
+"No; not that--yet. They'll wire again, to-night, they tell me."
+
+"When did you hear?"
+
+"Just now. An hour ago. His mother doesn't know it yet. Brenton, I've
+got to tell her." And the professor turned a wan, appealing face up to
+the younger man, as though in search of help.
+
+"Yes." The single word fell heavily. "You must." But Brenton, even
+while he was speaking, shut his teeth upon the thought. Then the priest
+within him rallied to the need, although the latent man of science in
+him forbade him to accompany the rallying with many words. "Can I be of
+any help?"
+
+"If you feel you could go to the house with me, Brenton. You knew
+Reed."
+
+Brenton's alert ear caught the unconscious change of tense. He
+interrupted with a question.
+
+"Just how bad is it?"
+
+"I don't know. 'Badly hurt', the telegram says. 'Will wire again in a
+few hours'. I suppose it's the same old story: an explosive and a
+panic. Somebody probably tried to stir a fire with a stick of frozen
+dynamite, or some such foolery as that." The scorn in the words came
+from the effort at self-mastery. Then the professor rose and looked
+about him vaguely for his hat. When he had found it, "Come along," he
+bade Brenton shortly. "We've got to get it over, even if it kills her.
+I believe in anaesthetics and hypnosis in such a case as this: drugging
+the victim and then impressing on him that he has always known the
+trouble and that it's certain to come out all right in time. Well, are
+you coming?" The voice sharpened again in its impatience to have the
+bad hour over.
+
+Out in the street and walking rapidly towards home, the professor spoke
+once more. This time, there was no sharpness, but rather the same note
+of appeal which Brenton had heard a little earlier.
+
+"Brenton, it's your chance now. I've been showing you the best of all
+my science. Now, for God's sake, give me back the best of your
+religion. In a time like this, science can't help us much. It shows us
+all the worst of things, and shuts down before whatever best there is.
+If your religion is any good at all, now is the time we need to make it
+count. Else, what's its use?"
+
+Before the unexpected, swift appeal, Brenton was dumb. What was the
+use, especially to a man like Professor Opdyke? It was all very well to
+talk about Reed's being safe in his Maker's hands, when common sense
+and science alike were insisting upon it that it was in all probability
+the hands of the surgeon who could rescue him from peril; that much
+less depended upon prayer than on the sterilizing processes. Of course,
+no one, however scientific, could deny the Master's law at the back of
+everything; but that law was a trifle too remote to be a potent source
+of comfort to a quivering mind. Besides, when, in all probability, it
+was that same law, either in breach or in observance, which had caused
+the trouble, it seemed a little bit unmerciful to brandish the cause as
+an instrument of healing.
+
+After all, in such a case as this, what was religion good for? One
+believed things, but only so far as they were based on law; and law is
+a stiff sort of moral plaster to apply to a bleeding wound. Of course,
+there was an infinite array of platitudes, phrased to fit every sort of
+emergency known to man. However, in a crisis such as this, it seemed to
+Brenton something little short of deliberate insult to offer a
+platitude to a man of Professor Opdyke's sort. All he could find to do,
+then, was to stand by and hold himself and them quite steady.
+
+And stand by steadily he did, all through that interminable April
+afternoon while the sun came sifting down through the elm buds, to
+throw irrelevant golden splashes across their gloom; while the merry
+voices of the college girls, passing by in the street outside, came
+floating in across their waiting silence. There was nothing in the
+world that he could do, except to be there and, now and then, to stave
+off a caller too insistent to be appeased by any bulletin issued by the
+maid. Among those callers was Prather, the novelist. Priest though he
+was, Brenton was conscious of a human and athletic wish to wring his
+neck, so palpably was his expression of fussy sympathy mingled with the
+professional sense of copy latent in the situation.
+
+And at last, when twilight had dulled the sunshine and sent the
+chattering, laughing college girls home to supper, a messenger boy came
+to the door to bring a yellow envelope.
+
+Professor Opdyke tore it open. Then, forgetful of his science,--
+
+"Thank God!" he said quite simply, as he read the message to his wife.
+
+Next morning early, Brenton went to them again. He found them taking
+breakfast with good appetite, while they made an infinite variety of
+plans for the home-coming of the invalid. There had been two more
+telegrams, the previous evening, and a night letter had followed them.
+To Brenton, however, the particulars seemed glorious rather than
+reassuring. Instead of the fire stirred with a stick of dynamite, there
+had been something infinitely more deadly. A careless blast, set off by
+an inexperienced miner, had brought down a fall of rock where it had
+been least expected. A dozen men had been injured, and some of the
+shoring had been loosened, imperilling the lives of many more. No
+reasonably sane consulting engineer, however conscientious, could have
+imagined it his duty to lead the work of rescue. Measured by the value
+to the corporation, his one brain was worth a dozen score of miners'
+lives. Nevertheless, Reed Opdyke had not viewed the matter in that
+light. He was alert and strong, trained to face every possible
+emergency known underground. Moreover, he knew better than any other
+man the conditions likely to be existent in the dismantled vein.
+Therefore it was Reed Opdyke who had led the first of the rescue
+parties.
+
+Quite as a matter of course, he had made his way directly to the
+injured men, had helped to carry them back safely to the main shaft.
+Providence always looks out for little things like that. It uses its
+tools before it blunts them. Then Opdyke had gone back again into the
+vein, to see if he could make up his mind, at a superficial glance,
+concerning the extent of the damage and the best chances for repairing
+it. It was then that he found one more miner, wedged between the
+loosened timbers of the shoring. At best, minutes were ahead of him,
+not hours. At best, the danger in freeing him was almost infinite. None
+the less, while other men faltered and drew back, afraid, Opdyke had
+sent an ax crashing into the weakened timbers.
+
+All this was told to the professor briefly. The rest of the message was
+couched in terms so surgical as to convey scant meaning to Scott
+Brenton's brain. At the very end, there were two dates, both only
+possible, both so remote as to turn Brenton sick at heart. Was it for
+this that such men as Reed Opdyke were created? Was nature merciless,
+was law, that it ordained such pitiful, pitiless waste?
+
+It was with these questions ringing in his brain, then, that Scott
+Brenton, after his old fashion, shut his teeth askew and awaited the
+still distant homecoming of his old-time idol. He gained the slimmest
+sort of comfort by remembering how characteristic it all was of the boy
+he used to know.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+
+
+That Reed Opdyke was very badly broken, no one, seeing him, could deny.
+Exactly what was the nature of the break, no one but Reed Opdyke and
+the surgeons knew. The surgeons were inclined to secrecy. Reed himself
+welcomed no queries on the subject. He merely smiled inscrutably, and
+talked about the weather.
+
+When, in late May, he first came home, his room threatened to become a
+place for penitential pilgrimage, a _memento-mori_ species of lay
+shrine; but Reed stopped all that quite firmly. He had no mind to be a
+hero anywhere, least of all in a town where ninety-seven per cent of
+the populace was feminine. Moreover, unkindly as he took to hero
+worship, he took still more unkindly to visits that quite obviously
+were intended to console him.
+
+"The Lord knows how long I'm destined to be lying up here," he remarked
+to Olive Keltridge, after one such visitation. "Anyhow, it is sure to
+be long enough for people to get the habit of me, and a chronic invalid
+is bound to be used as a spiritual salve. One takes him tracts and
+grape-fruit jelly, by way of offset to domestic rows. I'm not going to
+become accessory after the fact to all the local improprieties. It
+would have a rotten influence upon the entire community."
+
+Olive, who had dropped in ostensibly for purposes of gossip, nodded in
+comprehension. Indeed, she was in a position to comprehend the
+situation a long way more perfectly than even Reed, its victim and by
+no means of doubtful understanding, could ever do. She heard him talked
+about in a fashion that she found revolting. Her old-time comrade was
+as much a man as ever, despite his injuries, as sane in all his
+outlook, as whimsical and impersonal in his fun. She therefore resented
+the universal attitude of regarding him as a crushed archangel, a
+candidate for repeated and unlimited doses of mental gruel. If ever a
+man needed solid social nutriment, it was this energetic young engineer
+who was temporarily dragged off from the scene of action and reduced to
+the need of killing time within the limits of four walls. Indeed, it
+would take a good deal of social nutriment and social spice as well, to
+bring four walls and the exciting alternations of a canopy-top bed and
+a chintz couch up to the level of interest gained out of a succession
+of different mining camps and the different problems they presented,
+above ground and below. To Reed Opdyke, used to tramping over mountain
+trails, accustomed to riding anything from a half-broken cayuse to a
+wabbly platform at a rope's end, the day's journey nowadays limited
+itself to being lifted out of bed in the arms of his lusty nurse, being
+placed with all discretion in the exact middle of a couch and in being
+trundled slowly across the floor to the bay window. Later in the day,
+the process repeated itself in the reverse direction, but with even
+greater care because of the fatiguing experiences of the day. Therefore
+it was that Reed Opdyke preferred his visitors to have the flavour of
+tabasco, rather than whipped cream.
+
+Olive dropped in upon him, every day, and she always found a welcome.
+She had known Reed long enough not to be likely to collide with any of
+his prejudices. She had rollicked with him in his active days often
+enough to save him from feeling any ignominy in having her behold him
+in his passive ones. She was never sentimental; never, since their
+first inevitable bad half-hour together after his return, had she torn
+her hair, metaphorically speaking, above the spectacle of his
+afflictions. She merely handed him the things he couldn't reach; and
+gossiped ceaselessly about the things that were happening among their
+common friends, without making him half frantic because he could not go
+out and happen, too. She even, and therein lay her final greatness,
+blinked at Reed's occasional profanity as concerned his accident,
+whereas the average woman would have wept maudlinly.
+
+"Your vocabulary is a picturesque one, Reed," she told him, upon one
+occasion. "I ought to be shocked; but I've known you too long to be
+shocked at anything you do. Besides, in the end of all things, I
+imagine I should follow your own deplorable methods of speech. Swearing
+may not be decent socially; but it's a healthy pastime. Only look out
+you don't do it in the midst of a pastoral call."
+
+"By the way," Reed looked up suddenly; "I hear that one is imminent."
+
+Olive lifted her brows.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Brenton."
+
+"Haven't you seen him yet?"
+
+Reed shook his head.
+
+"No. It's been pretty decent of him, too, to hold off a little. Most
+parsons would have rushed in, hot foot, to administer extreme unction
+and be sure I was in a proper mood concerning Providence. Brenton has
+had the decency to wait a little. It was almighty decent, too. I knew
+him in my palmy days, when life was young. It's young for him
+still--Hold on, Olive; I'm not going to maunder!--and I had a natural
+dread of having him come piling in here to crow about himself and
+cackle over me."
+
+Olive's laugh was obviously forced. Even the most irresponsible of
+gossips is not always altogether hardened.
+
+"I love your metaphors, Reed," she told him. "To be sure, it never had
+occurred to me that Saint Peter's cock and Saint Peter's rector were
+identical terms."
+
+Reed digressed.
+
+"What's Brenton's wife turned into?" he inquired.
+
+Olive cast an apologetic glance at Mrs. Opdyke, knitting by the other
+window. Then she dropped her hands, palms up, into her lap. The gesture
+was so expressive as not to need the one word of her answer.
+
+"Impossible."
+
+"I'm not surprised."
+
+"You had seen her?"
+
+"Yes, at our commencement. She was a country daisy, if you choose: but
+a nig-nose one, not a placid ox-eye."
+
+This time, Olive felt called on to remonstrate.
+
+"Reed, you are becoming intolerable. A man flat on his back ought to be
+pondering upon the convolutions of his soul, not cultivating flowers of
+rhetoric."
+
+"Soul be hanged! I keep insisting that mine isn't in any more need of
+attention than it was when I was up and doing, and it's a long way
+greater bore. Besides, I am prouder of my rhetoric than of my spiritual
+convolutions. But about Brenton's wife? She seemed to me then the
+typical shrewd Yankee who would adapt herself to any sort of
+circumstances and get the best end of any sort of bargain."
+
+Olive nodded.
+
+"You've about hit it, Reed. But then, I'm not fair to her."
+
+"Not your sort, eh?" But Reed, as he looked at Olive and remembered
+Catia, felt no real need to put the question.
+
+"It's not that so much--well--no--I can't seem to understand her." Then
+Olive's eyes met his directly, and she stopped her rambling with a
+little laugh. "You needn't presume on your position, Reed. It's not
+decent to make me tell what I think of Mrs. Brenton, when you know you
+are driving me into a corner where I either have to lie, or else abuse
+her to a perfectly strange man."
+
+"I'm not a strange man. I've seen her in her salad days. 'Twas potato
+salad, too, symbolic of the soil whence she had sprung."
+
+But Olive held up her hand for mercy.
+
+"Reed, you are a most impossible type of invalid. If you keep on like
+this, I'll tell Mrs. Brenton that you'd love to have her come and sing
+hymns to you."
+
+"Olive! For--" And then his curiosity overcame his consternation. "Can
+she sing?" he queried.
+
+"Very prettily." Olive's accent defied analysis. "She would love it,
+too. I know, because, only the other day, she asked me to give you a
+message."
+
+"And you embezzled it?"
+
+"Until it seemed a proper season. If I had given it too early, you
+might have mislaid it in your memory, and forgotten to send a grateful
+answer."
+
+"What did the woman want?" Reed questioned, with a sudden curtness that
+betrayed to Olive's ear the crackling of the thin ice on which, day by
+day, they skated over the surface of the tragedy.
+
+Nevertheless, Olive struck out fearlessly. Even if the ice did crack
+and let them through, such old, well-tried friends as Reed and herself
+could face what lay beneath it, without sentimental fears. They had
+taken one such plunge together; they both preferred to avoid another,
+if they could, and yet better to flounder through the ice than to keep
+away from it entirely. Therefore Olive's tone was nonchalant, as she
+reported,--
+
+"I met her in the street, the day after you came home, and she begged
+me to tell you--"
+
+"She took it as a matter of course you'd be bidden to the private
+view," Reed interrupted.
+
+"Of course. The whole community understood that. Else, what was the use
+of our breaking our collar bones in unison, when you lured me into
+tobogganing off the barn?" Olive replied promptly. "Where was I? Oh,
+yes,--begged me to tell you how well she remembered your kindness to
+her--yes, your kindness--when she was a shy child from the country."
+
+Reed's comment was a terse one.
+
+"Shy! She!" he said.
+
+"You sound like an Indian dialect. However--And that she should claim a
+place among your earlier friends, when the time came when they could
+sit with you."
+
+Reed squirmed.
+
+"Sit with! Oh, Lord! That settles it, Olive. In spite of all your
+polite evasions, the town does look upon me as a moral asset, a chronic
+case to be put upon a par with other charities," he said, with sudden
+bitterness.
+
+Olive's colour came, though not from annoyance.
+
+"Don't be a dunce, Reed," she besought him. "You merely are the latest
+sensation in returning prodigals; you haven't sufficient staying power
+to become a charity, or even a fad. Then I shall tell the sympathetic
+lady--?"
+
+"To go to everlasting thunder," Reed growled ungratefully. "Hang it
+all, Olive, does she think I want a row of hens coming to cluck above
+the ruins?"
+
+"Which reminds me," Olive rose; "when do you look for the conjugal
+rooster?"
+
+"Brenton? Sit down again; you're not in any hurry," Reed urged her.
+
+But she shook her head.
+
+"No; but I am a hen, and nobody knows when I may forget myself and
+begin to cluck. No. Truly, Reed, my feelings are injured and I'm going
+home."
+
+"What's the use? You've nothing in the world to do."
+
+"I beg your pardon, I have domestic cares. My blessed father has to go
+to Boston at two-twenty. If I don't go home in season to arouse him to
+the practical details inherent in the fact, he'll be starting off in
+slippers and without his evening clothes. Really, Reed, I've got to
+go."
+
+"What are you going to do, this afternoon?" Reed's eyes were wishful,
+for the time was hanging heavy in his idle hands. "Of course, though,
+there's no sense in my being selfish."
+
+Olive saw the wishfulness; but she ignored it. Both Professor Opdyke
+and her father had told her that Reed's sentence was a long one, long
+and heavy. Both Mrs. Opdyke and her husband had begged the girl to do
+what she could to keep it from seeming too much like solitary
+confinement. Olive was fond of Reed, though without the consciousness
+of a single vein of sentiment to blur their friendship. She enjoyed his
+society as much as she admired his virile, easy-going manliness. All
+the more, on this account, she was sure that the only way of keeping
+their friendship and their enjoyment keen would lie in avoiding any
+surfeit. For herself, she felt no uneasiness. Reed's society, under no
+circumstances, could become cloying. But for Reed she did not know. The
+idler the hands, the sooner they weary of any toy. And poor Reed's
+hands, in all surety, were very, very idle. Moreover, unless she went
+out greedily in search of fresh variety, how could she bring it into
+his present prison? If she spent too much time with him, inevitably
+they would exhaust their fund of gossip. Then they would be driven into
+becoming autobiographical, and that would be the finish of their
+present friendship. Therefore,--
+
+"Sorry, Reed," she told him; "but there's a tea on at the Prathers'.
+Earlier, I'm taking Dolph Dennison canoeing."
+
+"Olive!" Reed's accent was remonstrant. "How can you stand that little
+duffer?"
+
+Olive rose to the defence.
+
+"He's not such a duffer. Of course, he's young and callow; but he's
+good fun."
+
+"Yes; but an instructor, and only rhetoric, at that." Reed's voice
+showed his scorn.
+
+"You're jealous, Reed. You think he will do better metaphors than you;
+but you needn't worry. Dolph doesn't talk shop. Besides, he may get to
+be a real professor, if he keeps at work; and," Olive's glance, merry
+and not uncomfortably pitiful, rested upon the long-limbed figure lying
+so flat beside her; "even you must admit it, Reed, that rhetoric is a
+much safer means of livelihood than engineering. Good bye, boy, and
+keep out of mischief till I get here, next time."
+
+As it chanced, it was that afternoon that Brenton came to see him, for
+the first time since Reed's return. Whatever Brenton's thought about
+the matter, it must be confessed that Opdyke, albeit healthy-minded and
+as philosophical as a surgical case can ever be, had felt a good deal
+of dread of their meeting. In the old days, he had been the strong one
+and the masterful, Brenton the weak. The present reversal of the
+situation went upon his nerves.
+
+He had remembered Brenton clearly, all these intervening years. More
+than once, in the intervals of his strenuous life, he had found himself
+wondering what the gaunt young countryman had become. In the time of
+it, Reed had had no notion how thoroughly he had liked the fellow, how
+thoroughly he had believed in his latent possibilities. Looking back
+upon them now, judging them by the broader standards of his own wider
+knowledge of the things that really count, Reed had felt his old-time
+interest grow and quicken. It had caused him no especial surprise,
+then, when a letter from his father had brought him news of the rector
+of Saint Peter's. Neither had it caused him any more surprise when his
+father's later letters recorded bit by bit the intimacy slowly growing
+up between the scholarly young rector and his father's critical self.
+Instead, Reed took a certain comfort in reflecting that he had foreseen
+it all along. However, he had felt an undeniable curiosity to see the
+shabby, under-nourished Scott Brenton, a thing of shambling feet and
+knobbly joints, transmogrified into the well-groomed, easy-mannered
+type of rector which had become traditional at Saint Peter's.
+
+Nevertheless, now that he was at home once more and, to all seeming,
+candidate for churchly ministrations, Reed found he drew back a little
+from their meeting. At the start, even though his bodily strength
+allowed it, his nervous energy shrank from the ordeal of seeing people.
+It seemed to him that there would be so many things he ought to explain
+to them to make his position clear. Of course, with his family and the
+Keltridges and even the despised Dolph Dennison, it was different,
+although even the irresponsible Dolph had floundered and struck bottom
+on a conversational reef or two, and it had taken all Reed's grip to
+haul him off and steer him into deep waters and consequent safety.
+
+Left to himself and thinking the matter over at his leisure, Reed
+admitted, with an impersonal candour, that it was very easy for his
+guests to err in tact. A man in his predicament was bound to be a
+trifle flooring; it did not affect the question in the least that he
+was in no wise responsible for the predicament. It had resulted, quite
+simply, from his natural instincts, not from any conscious thirsting
+for fame and for consequent Carnegie medals. However, the average
+visitor could not be expected to be aware of that; and therefore he
+would be more than likely to feel it incumbent upon him to say gracious
+things in a tremulous falsetto voice. In the present case, the question
+concerned itself with the problem whether or not Scott Brenton would
+prove to be the average visitor.
+
+When at last Brenton came, he proved himself to be quite apart from the
+average. He neither floundered, nor did he err in tact. He even forgot
+about any proper greetings, so promptly did he fling himself into a
+tide of reminiscent gossip. Of course, the gossip straightway led to a
+demand to be brought down to date in Opdyke's history, a demand which
+concerned itself quite as much with the technique of mining as it did
+with the more personal aspects of an engineering life and of the final
+accident. They reached that in course of time, however; and Reed told
+his tale willingly and without too much reservation, grateful alike for
+the sympathetic interest and comprehension it evoked in Brenton, and
+for the half-dozen downright words with which Brenton spoke his
+sympathy.
+
+"Of course," he added thoughtfully, his eyes on Opdyke's face; "it's
+bound to be all sorts of a bore for a man like you to be lying up, to
+say nothing of the waste of time for your profession, and of the purely
+personal issue of the aches of it. However, I can't be altogether sorry
+for the chance that strands you here in the edge of my own puddle. I
+mean to have all the good of you, while you're in range. You remember
+how the boys used to call me Reed's parson?"
+
+Reed laughed.
+
+"You knew it at the time? I must say you had the trick of looking
+totally unconscious. Well, it's your turn now. Going, man? Sorry you
+must; but you'll be coming in again, to-morrow? No; hang it all! You're
+a parson, and to-morrow is Sunday."
+
+To-morrow was Sunday, and the first one in the month. That meant three
+services for Brenton, plus a Bible class at noon. Nevertheless, between
+the services, he contrived to drop in for a look at Opdyke; not that
+the look, taken as itself, was needful. All that morning long, and a
+good share of the night before, there had not left him the picture of
+the long, straight figure on the couch, and of the face above it, the
+same face he recalled so well, and yet so curiously altered,
+strengthened. The picture never left him; it was most distinct of all,
+while, with an unwonted throb in his voice, he slowly read from the
+open book before him,--
+
+"Thou dost not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men--In Thy
+wisdom Thou hast seen fit to visit him with trouble--"
+
+Wisdom! Thy wisdom. Brenton's mind lingered on the words, even after
+his tongue had passed on to the closing phrases of the prayer. Thy
+wisdom? Yes. But what especial wisdom, what ineffable and divine
+purpose lay behind the swift blow which had knocked into prostrate
+helplessness a man such as Reed Opdyke? Was it quite honest and
+above-board for him himself, Scott Brenton, to kneel there in the
+chancel, praying aloud and fervently for the sanctification of a
+Fatherly correction to him whose life, from all accounts, had held no
+flagrant germ of error? And what especial sanctification was there,
+beyond shutting one's teeth and taking it quite pluckily and as it
+came?
+
+Above the open book, Scott Brenton's eyes, wide open and very lustrous,
+were looking past the bounding walls before him, seeing the brave smile
+that Reed Opdyke had sent after him by way of parting. Brenton's voice,
+meanwhile, always flexible and resonant, was throbbing with thoughts
+which had no possible relation with the words now falling from his
+tongue,--
+
+"Fulfil the desires--as may be most expedient for them."
+
+He recalled his mind to the words he uttered, recalled it with a jerk.
+Was it expedient for Reed Opdyke to be overthrown and laid aside more
+or less indefinitely, just as he was about touching the fulness of
+professional success? Who ordained what was expedient, anyway?
+Providence?
+
+And then, in the hush that followed after the benediction, there came
+into Brenton's ears the echo of Reed's voice, gay and indomitable
+rather by force of will than from conviction.
+
+"No," he had said to Brenton, midway in their conversation of the day
+before. "No; it's not a chastisement of Providence. I have too much
+respect for Providence to lay off on it the result of some infernal
+fool's careless use of explosives. Providence, as a rule, doesn't go
+out gunning with black powder. Its ways are more ineffable than that."
+
+And yet, if not Providence, or its equivalent, Scott Brenton asked
+himself above his clasped hands, then what?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN
+
+
+It was a month or two before he asked that question of Doctor Eustace
+Keltridge; but, in the end, it was bound to come. Whatever a man in
+Brenton's position might think inside himself, professionally he must
+talk of Providence, and of divine dispensations, and of all the rest of
+his ecclesiastical stock in trade. Far harder than the talking, though,
+was the assenting to others when they talked, for then he had no choice
+of modifying phrases; he must take it as it came. Of course, it never
+would have done for the rector of St. Peter's Parish to deny the
+Fatherly finger of correction as the motive power of Reed Opdyke's
+chastisement. None the less, the increasing number of hours he
+contrived to spend in Opdyke's room gave a decreasing heartiness to his
+assent. Even if he was a preacher, Scott Brenton was a judge of men. No
+man who was not a dunce could have studied Opdyke, through all those
+weeks, and come out from the study to deny the inherent cleanliness and
+uprightness of his life. Then, wherefore the chastisement? Study the
+case as he would through the lens of his ecclesiasticism, Scott Brenton
+could not discover any especial need of sanctification for the virile,
+clever engineer.
+
+"And yet," he burst out to Doctor Keltridge over a cigar, one day; "we
+are bound by all our articles of indenture, we preachers, to prate
+about the hand of the Lord and special Providences, when all the time
+we know the trouble came out of somebody's running up against simple,
+scientific law. It's theology, not science, we poor beggars are set up
+to preach, even in funeral sermons of men like Opdyke, although it's
+not theology, but just plain science, or the lack of it, that's killed
+them."
+
+"Well?" the doctor queried.
+
+"Well." Brenton uncrossed his legs and, with a sudden snap, crossed
+them the other way. "What I want to know is this: what in the world is
+going to become of us fellows who go on preaching one thing, while we
+believe another?"
+
+"According to the Book of Revelation, you'll become a sulphate," the
+doctor told him grimly.
+
+Brenton tossed aside his cigar, thrust his fists into his pockets and
+rose to pace the floor.
+
+"Don't joke, doctor," he said impatiently. "For once, I'm past it, past
+its doing me any good, I mean. A baby, frightened at the dark and
+howling for its nurse, isn't going to be diverted with a phosphorescent
+jumping jack. Now you see here. It isn't only the case of Opdyke,
+though God knows that is a flagrant instance of exactly what I mean.
+All week long, I am coming into contact with just such cases, cases
+where the physical cause and effect and the moral one can't possibly be
+stretched until they coincide. Somebody breaks one of the eternal laws,
+the laws laid down in Genesis and provable in any twentieth-century
+laboratory. He gets off scot free, and neither realizes what he's done,
+nor pays the penalty. The flying pieces, though, fall on some other man
+who is trudging along the trail of another law and keeping it at every
+point. He gets killed, or worse; and the first man never knows what he
+has accomplished. That sort of thing is happening all the time,
+somewhere or other. As a rule, too, the victim is a long way a better
+man than the original sinner who brought the ruin on him. Week days, we
+go to see him and, so far as our priestly vocabularies will allow, we
+help him to swear at the fate that has bowled him over. Nevertheless,
+on Sunday morning, we haul out our sanctity and our surplices, put them
+both on, and hold forth about Fatherly correction and a lot of other
+things that, in our heart of hearts, we don't believe."
+
+"Don't you?" the doctor asked him suddenly, after a short pause.
+
+"I do not."
+
+"Don't you, as a priest, believe, for instance, that this whole trouble
+was sent to Opdyke for his betterment?"
+
+Brenton halted in his walk, and gazed down at the doctor fearlessly.
+
+"I do not," he said.
+
+"You profess to," the doctor reminded him, with scant mercy.
+
+Brenton's lips stiffened.
+
+"Exactly. There is the trouble. I also profess, two or three times each
+Sunday, that I believe in the resurrection of the body. Nevertheless,
+any such belief is impossible for a man who has ever seen the equipment
+of a modern laboratory. As for Opdyke's case, why is it any more for
+his betterment than it's for the betterment of the little baby whose
+nurse accidentally gives it strychnine instead of squills?"
+
+"Don't be archaic, Brenton," the doctor bade him. "One doesn't give
+squills nowadays. However--"
+
+Brenton flung up his head impatiently. The doctor liked the gesture,
+liked the little angry glint in the gray eyes.
+
+"You mean then," he persisted slowly, and Brenton, listening, was aware
+that he was talking as one man to another, not as the senior warden of
+Saint Peter's to its rector; "that you are saying things on Sunday that
+you're denying, all the week?"
+
+Brenton nodded curtly.
+
+"That's about the size of it."
+
+Well as he had come to know the doctor, the next query took him by
+surprise.
+
+"What have you been eating?" Doctor Keltridge demanded briefly.
+
+"Eating!" Scott Brenton's voice was as blank as were his eyes.
+
+"Yes, eating," the doctor iterated. "Doubts are generally more or less
+digestive in their origin. Caviar would have made a total agnostic of
+Saint John himself, and Saint Luke would have been the first one to
+tell him so, and order a blue pill." As he spoke, he gazed at Brenton
+critically. "You're running down, man, for a fact. Is this thing
+worrying you?" he asked kindly.
+
+"Well, yes, a little," Brenton confessed. "It's bound to, doctor. I'm
+not agnostic in the least; I believe that any creed has got to be
+interpreted with more than a grain of salt, according to one's especial
+nature and its secretions. However, it's beginning to go against my
+ideas to discover that there's more salt than belief within me when I
+get up to recite my Credo."
+
+The doctor laughed, in comfortable comprehension.
+
+"It depends a little on how your salt analyzes out, Brenton. It may be
+much more harmless than you think, just a normal precipitate and not a
+deadly poison. However," and the doctor's face twinkled with humorous
+sympathy; "it's just about as well to keep it in solution for the
+present. Therefore, both as your medical adviser and as your senior
+warden, I'm going to give you a tonic to that end. Moreover, I want you
+to eat lots of underdone beef, to drink lots of good beer, and spend a
+good half your time out-doors. Then, if the doubts hang on, come back
+to me and I'll take another whack at them. They're harmless enough now,
+like most germs in their early stages of development; but nobody knows
+what they may turn into, if we let them go on working. Now come along
+into the laboratory and watch my latest bacillus increase and multiply.
+It beats the sons of Adam into a cocked hat; and it has more horns than
+all of your damned doubtings put together." On the threshold of the
+laboratory, however, the old doctor paused. His accent, when he spoke,
+was absolutely reverent, despite his words. "Brenton, you all of you
+admit, whether you believe in eternal law or in special creation, that
+God made man in His own image. Then, granted a proper ancestry for
+every germ, there must have been some place for doubtings, even in the
+original and immortal Pattern. If that's the case, why should we all of
+us set ourselves up to confound them utterly? They must have some
+worthy purpose; else they never would have survived."
+
+Side by side, the two men hung over the bacillus and forgot the
+doubtings. Later, when Brenton went away, he took with him the
+prescription for the tonic and gave the doctor his solemn word of
+honour that he would straightway telephone for beef and beer. He kept
+his word so well, and so clever had been the doctor's diagnosis that
+Reed Opdyke, flat on his back through all the torrid heat of summer,
+felt moved to express his envious approbation.
+
+"Hang it all, Brenton, what are you doing to yourself, these latter
+days?" he demanded, one morning after the four walls of his prison room
+had seemed closing in upon him and smothering him, during all the
+sultry night. "You look as fit as a fighting cock, when all the rest of
+us are grilly worms. How do you manage it? Whatever the state of your
+spiritual graces, at least you're growing in purely fleshly ones."
+
+Brenton laughed at the accent of the compliment which unmistakably was
+begrudged. Nevertheless, the laugh stopped short at his lips, and his
+gray eyes were sober as they looked down upon his friend. The "puffic'
+fibbous" was distinctly worse for wear, that morning. His eyes were
+heavy, and his wavy hair clung limply about the temples where the
+hollows were showing more and more clearly with every passing day. He
+was growing whiter, too, with the uncanny waxiness of a surface lighted
+from within. The absolute confinement and the pitiless heats of summer
+were telling on the "puffic' fibbous ", reducing him to the merest
+shell of his old-time self, and yet the shell was by no means hollow.
+Within it still lurked the old magnetic Reed, plucky, indomitable.
+
+"You're positively waxing fat, you healthy beggar," he went on, before
+Brenton could speak; "and Keltridge had the nerve to tell me he had
+been giving you a tonic. What went wrong? Digestion, the scourge of
+parsons? Or were you pining for your customary adulation, denied you
+now those college girls have gone off for the summer?" The lazy voice
+was full of contentment in its own mockery. To hear Reed speaking, one
+would have been sure that the world was all before him, waiting at his
+idle feet.
+
+Brenton's answer echoed the selfsame note.
+
+"Adulation, Opdyke! I'm a hard-worked clergyman, and target for more
+criticism than you engineers have ever dreamed of."
+
+"Much you are! But do sit down. You make me want to get up, too, when
+you rage around like that. No; not that stuffed chair. It's too hot.
+Try that cane thing, and, while you're about it, there's a siphon in
+that ice chest over there. So far as I've discovered, that's the one
+decent thing about being knocked out in summer; they're in honour bound
+to have an iced supply-place handy. But, about the adulation, I know
+whereof I speak. The average college girl hasn't a softly wooing voice,
+and I haven't spent my time lurking here invisible for nothing. The
+little dears have favoured me with their views of most things and all
+men, myself included. It has been done quite unconsciously; I know that
+because of the flavour of some of their remarks as concerned myself."
+And, contrary to his custom, Reed laughed bitterly. "As for you,
+Brenton, I wonder you're not as bad as Baalam's ass. If they could have
+their way, they would strip you of your clerical broadcloth and robe
+you in a full suit of angelic eider down. Still, you needn't look smug,
+while you deny it; it's nothing to be proud about. It's not your
+preaching does it, man; it's chiefly on account of your voice, and the
+way your hair sprouts from your scalp. For pure purposes of religion, a
+hairy baritone is a long way more potent than a bald and quavering
+tenor; at least, so far as the youthful student is concerned. But
+what's the tonic?"
+
+Obediently Brenton had dropped down into the chair, the cane thing.
+First, though, he had deposited his hat and stick upon the nearest
+table and hunted out the siphon, as Opdyke had suggested. Then,--
+
+"The doctor says it's for my spiritual doubtings," he answered.
+"Myself, I more than half suspect it's for my sense of humour."
+
+"Hm!" Opdyke commented crisply. "They're only husband and wife--after
+the divorce. What's the row?"
+
+The answer came only in a little sigh, curiously like a groan.
+
+Reed half closed his eyes, and peered up at Brenton through the crack.
+
+"Mental growing pains?" he queried. "Too bad, old man. I thought you
+had passed that epoch; it generally comes with the cutting of one's
+wisdom teeth. Anyhow, we all go through it sooner or later."
+
+"Sometimes both," Brenton answered restlessly.
+
+Reed's eyes opened, with a snap.
+
+"You've been through it once before? Of course. I remember now; you
+started as an ultra-Calvinist, and came over with a flop. Whittenden of
+Saint Luke's told me. He always claimed he was the man who did the
+deed."
+
+"You knew Whittenden?" For the moment, Brenton forgot all other matters
+in the question.
+
+"Rather! And it's not the sort of privilege one is likely to forget. He
+is 'the whole state of Christ's Church Militant' in his own stubby,
+curly-headed little person." Reed's voice grew resonant with every
+syllable.
+
+"I know." Brenton nodded. "Where did you run across him?"
+
+"In Colorado. A cousin of his had lungs, and Whittenden put in his
+whole vacation, two years ago, helping the man keep from being too
+badly bored. We had an accident; a cage fell and smashed a dozen
+miners. Every single man of them was at the end of things, and they
+were Catholics. Most of them couldn't speak ten words of English. The
+nearest priest was across the divide, ten miles away, and the poor
+beggars hadn't ten minutes to wait. They knew that, according to their
+religion, it meant eternal hell for them. Whittenden heard about it,
+and came running, book in one hand, surplice in the other. The way he
+made that service for the dying hum was a caution; but he got it done
+in time, before the first man died." Reed's face was growing scarlet
+with the excitement of the memory. "It was Protestant, of course; but
+they didn't know English enough to find it out, and they died happy in
+the certainty that he'd saved them. Then he yanked off his surplice as
+fast as he'd yanked it on, and went to work to help us lay them out
+decently, before their wives and children saw them. I tell you what,
+Brenton--" Lost to the present in the old, exciting memory, Reed forgot
+himself and started up. "Oh, damn!" he said, and fainted quietly away,
+cut out of consciousness of agony unspeakable.
+
+An hour afterward, Brenton left Reed comparatively comfortable, and
+went his way. Like most men in such an emergency, he had been
+thoroughly terrified. The reaction from his terror left him thoughtful,
+even a little morbid. The fact of his manifest uselessness in the eyes
+of Reed's trained nurse led him to doubt his usefulness in the more
+legitimate fields of his own profession. For the rest, his friends were
+all of a piece. Opdyke and Whittenden alike had risen to the emergency
+with which fate had confronted them, had done their downright, obvious
+duty, regardless of any consequences beyond the simple one of
+fulfilling the immediate need. They were men of action and sincerity,
+men who really counted to the world. He--
+
+He smiled bitterly. Reed Opdyke's chaff, meant in all good nature, had
+struck home to the very marrow of his self-distrust. He had clambered
+to a pedestal where he stood and preached banal things which, in
+reality, he doubted, and smiled at his congregation, and sniffed
+contentedly at the fumes of incense rising about him, incense of which
+he was but too well aware. He would have had no idea how to stop it;
+but, if the truth were told, he had had no especial wish to stop it, if
+he could. It had been a pleasant experience, this knowing himself the
+idol of a steadily increasing share of his congregation. He had known
+it, as a matter of course; he had done his best to convince himself
+that it came from the quality of the gospel which he preached, from the
+sincerity and fire with which he preached it.
+
+Now, all at once, denying nothing of the popularity, the adulation, as
+Opdyke had called it, he forced himself to deny his former theory of
+its cause. It was as Reed had said. Indeed, it had been a constant
+marvel to Brenton, all those summer months, how much more clearly Reed,
+flat on his back inside four walls, did see things than the rest of
+them. Reed had told a truth as undeniable as it was unpalatable: that
+all of Brenton's adulation came, not from his priestly fervour, but
+from such personal details as eyes and hair and vibrant vocal cords. As
+for sincerity--Had he ever been sincere, in any of his preaching? Had
+any word of his, measured by the simple tenets of his creed, ever in
+reality rung true? Could he ever, knowing of a surety what he did, ever
+attain sincerity, so long as he remained the priest? He doubted.
+
+This time, his doubts took hold of him. Indeed, it is a far more
+unsettling process to doubt one's self than it is to doubt the ultimate
+truths of a wholly impersonal system of salvation. For the next few
+weeks, Brenton shunned his fellow men almost completely, while he took
+his doubtings far afield and wrestled with them there. Moreover,
+despite the doctor's tonic and the ozone of the autumn-tinctured air,
+Brenton came in from tramping over the mountains, or up and down the
+valley, weary in mind, distressed in soul. He yearned acutely, in these
+weeks, for contact with his kind: for Professor Opdyke and the sturdy
+doctor, for Reed, for Olive whose clear eyes always saw the soul
+beneath the aura. Nevertheless, he kept away from them all absolutely.
+This was a matter he must settle with himself alone, a battle to be
+fought out in silence and with himself as sole antagonist. A ring of
+commenting spectators, applauding while they looked on, could only
+blunt the point of his attacks which, to be final, must be swift and
+sure.
+
+It was a curious commentary upon Scott Brenton's domestic life that,
+shrinking as he did from contact with his kind, he yet felt no wish to
+withdraw himself from Kathryn. The statement of the fact contains its
+explanation. Kathryn was his wedded wife; he loved her. Nevertheless,
+she was not of his kind, nor ever had been. Such crises as his present
+one would have been incomprehensible to her. Therefore, Scott faced it,
+with Kathryn at his side.
+
+Now and then, though, over their morning coffee, Scott had a wayward
+longing to open the day's arena to her, to force her to look in upon
+the fight he waged. Then he gave up the idea disdainfully. As well try
+to leave his hand-print on an iron bar or a gray granite slab as to
+seek to impress on Kathryn's mind the vital nature of the questions
+that were haunting him, taunting him, turning his life into a purgatory
+of uncertainties whether his choice of profession had been aught but a
+selfish wish for an easy and spectacular road to social eminence.
+
+Just once, he thought he had impressed her.
+
+Throughout this time, Brenton's sermons were prepared with a fury of
+devotion to which, of old, they had been strangers. As the autumn waxed
+and waned to winter, and the holy Advent season came to hand, he cast
+his doubts aside and sought to bury them beneath the glorious gospel of
+the Advent song: Peace to Men of Good Will. Indeed, there came one
+Sunday morning when the message of good will downed all the other
+voices, doubts, hopes, or fears, downed them beneath its brave promises
+of inheritance for him who lives according to its simple law.
+
+Brenton, afire with his message, self-forgetful, thrilling with the
+greatness of his theme, felt his congregation taking fire beneath him.
+For the hour, at least, there could be no question of his sincerity, of
+his belief in the gospel he was preaching, a simple gospel of
+generosity and love and of hard, ungrudging work for universal
+betterment. Into his last sentences, careless of self, he flung the
+outpourings of his very soul, and the quick sentences fell, one, and
+one, and one, into the hush made out of many minds sharing a common
+mood. Brenton felt it, and gave thanks. Here and now was his
+vindication, here at last the proof that he had not chosen his calling
+meanly, nor in all selfishness.
+
+One after another, then, his congregation yielded to his sway. Last of
+them all to yield was Kathryn, sitting in a front pew and, after her
+custom, smiling up at him in an admiration which he had come to find
+galling in its emptiness of any meaning. But, at the last passionately
+fervent words, her blank smile faded and, for the first time in all his
+preaching, her face became overcast, intent. His sermon ended, Brenton
+bowed his head in a benediction which, in his heart, he sent most
+earnestly upon his wife. Perchance the selfsame hour that saw his
+self-vindication should also see the rending of the veil of
+non-comprehension which had fallen down between the two of them.
+
+The luncheon hour, however, brought with it disillusion. Over the
+luncheon, Kathryn spoke.
+
+"Scott," she asked her husband; "did you see me frowning at you, this
+morning, just as you were finishing?"
+
+He looked up from his plate, the light of happiness already dimming a
+little in his eyes.
+
+"I saw--" He hesitated. Then he said quite simply, "Yes."
+
+"Did you know why?" Kathryn took another olive, as she spoke.
+
+In total silence, he shook his head.
+
+There was a little pause, while Kathryn's teeth met in the soft ripe
+olive. Then,--
+
+"Well, it was this: that final gesture of yours is awfully effective.
+You know the one I mean, your hands shut on your stole just at your
+shoulders? I hate to have you give it up; but, really, I'm afraid
+you'll have to. In the long run, it is bound to get your stoles shabby,
+especially the white one; and, now I have all the--the little things to
+make, I can't keep embroidering new stoles. After this, when you see me
+making up the face I put on, this morning, you'll please remember it
+must be 'hands down'. Another olive? Take them away then, Mary."
+
+That same afternoon, Reed Opdyke was astounded to receive a long call
+from his recreant parson.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN
+
+
+"Where away?"
+
+With the question, Dolph Dennison flung himself into step at Olive
+Keltridge's side, one morning in late January. Two inches of snow
+crackling under foot and a coating of hoarfrost on all the elm trees
+was answering as a fair substitute for winter; and the blood of both
+young people was tingling with even that unwonted sting. Nevertheless,
+though walking briskly, Olive had been lost in a brown study, and she
+started, as Dolph's genial hail fell on her ears. Then she nodded
+gayly.
+
+"Ditto. Why aren't you in class?" she demanded.
+
+"It's low-minded to be eternally talking shop," he told her. "Why can't
+you for once let me delude myself into the belief that I'm like a lily
+of the field, without a spinning wheel in sight?"
+
+"A lily in a fur-lined coat!" Olive's accent was disdainful. "You ought
+to be ashamed to be rolled up like this, this splendid morning."
+
+Dolph eyed her seal jacket accusingly.
+
+"I am," he confessed. "I'm immensely proud of my fur lining, and I hate
+like thunder to go out, buttoned up. One might as well be lined with
+quilted farmer satin, with an imitation-mink shawl collar, for all the
+glory he gets out of winter. That's where you women score; you wear
+your wool outside."
+
+"Yes; but we don't turn up our collars, a day like this," Olive mocked
+him. "Really, Dolph, you're growing soft. But you haven't answered my
+question. Why aren't you at a class?"
+
+"You're so beastly insistent, Olive. What's the use? If you must know,
+I've given the dear children a cut, this morning. One of them came
+prowling into class, all broken out with mumps; that is, if you can
+call it broken out, when there is only one of it and as large as a
+camel's hump. Anyhow, I freely offered them a cut, and advised them
+all to go to their homes and to disinfect themselves with due
+discretion."
+
+"And you?" Olive inquired.
+
+"Me? I'm immune. I haven't cheek enough to begin to swell up like that.
+Accordingly, I am merely taking a walk, while I cultivate my muse."
+
+"And I'm to be the muse's understudy?" Olive laughed. "Thank you, I'm
+otherwise engaged."
+
+"You looked it, when I met you. What's doing?"
+
+"Household economics. I'm going the rounds of the basement bargain
+counters, hunting dish towelling."
+
+"What's the use?"
+
+"To dry the dishes," Olive told him literally. "One doesn't want to eat
+things in a puddle."
+
+Dolph stuck his hands into the pockets of his coat. Then he turned to
+face her rebukefully.
+
+"What a concrete mind you do have, Olive! I wish you'd come into my
+classes; I'd teach you how to generalize, and give you some much-needed
+lessons in beauty of diction. You mean well; but you certainly do talk
+like a housemaid, and--Good morning, Mr. Brenton. Jolly sort of
+morning, too!" Then Dolph digressed. "What in thunder is the matter
+with that fellow, Olive?"
+
+"Matter?" Olive tried her best to look surprised at the question.
+
+"No use shamming. You are perfectly aware that something has gone wrong
+with the dominie, and he's on his nerves," Dolph told her coolly.
+"Besides, why should you be denying it? One only tells fibs about one's
+own responsibilities, and you aren't responsible for Brenton, as far as
+I know."
+
+"Heaven forbid!" Olive replied, with hasty piety. "I have all the
+responsibility I can endure, with you and Reed."
+
+"Best cut out Opdyke, then, and focus it all on me," Dolph advised her
+genially. "I need it, and I shall repay your effort, seven-fold." Then
+he digressed again, this time without a trace of humour. "Olive, for a
+fact, how is Opdyke?" he inquired.
+
+"Haven't you seen him lately?"
+
+"Yes, of course." Dolph spoke with some impatience. "That's the reason
+I am asking. I go in there, as often as I can spend the time and stand
+the strain."
+
+Olive edged a trifle nearer to the fur-lined elbow.
+
+"You feel it, too, Dolph?"
+
+"Good Lord, yes! How could anybody help it, anybody with a nerve in his
+composition? It takes it out of one tremendously, Olive," Dolph frowned
+intently; "and it's a curious fact that it takes it out of me worse on
+his good days than on his bad ones."
+
+Olive glanced up sharply.
+
+"I didn't know he had any bad ones; at least, not to show them out."
+
+Dolph shook his head at the street in general.
+
+"That's the woman of you, Olive; the woman in you, I mean. Opdyke is
+morally bound to hold it all in, when you're in sight and hearing. No
+man that's half a man will squeak before a woman, and Opdyke's all man,
+fast enough. Yes, poor devil, he does have his bad days, like all the
+rest of us. However, the rest of us can arise and lick somebody, if the
+spirit moves us; and poor old Opdyke has to lie still and take it out
+in swearing. He does swear, too; and now and then his temper is
+positively vitriolic."
+
+"Reed's?" Olive's voice betrayed indignation, incredulity.
+
+"Rather." Dolph laughed. "On one or two occasions, it has risen to that
+level." Then he sobered. "Don't begrudge him the relief of it, Olive.
+It's his one salvation, his one road of escape from something that
+easily might be madness. Have you thought about the change it's made
+for him?"
+
+"Dolph! Do any of us ever think of anything else?"
+
+For an instant, he eyed her keenly, apparently seeking to discover what
+underlay her words. Then,--
+
+"Not when we are with him, I fancy," he assented. "And, of course, I
+never knew him much till now, so even I can't take it all in, the way
+you do. Still, I can imagine it a little, imagine what it must be, to
+an out-door man like him, to be shut up in that one room, packed in
+with all the frilly duds Mrs. Opdyke has stuffed in around him. Really,
+I'd feel exactly like a mutton chop in a tissue-paper flounce, myself.
+The frills add to the ignominy. Why can't she let him have the good of
+all the bare, empty space he can get, even if it isn't much?"
+
+Olive interrupted.
+
+"Dolph, you're not the dunce you might be. That's a good idea."
+
+He nodded.
+
+"It's common sense. Fancy, Olive, if you were laid low, which heaven
+forfend, and had to live mainly on the fruits of your imagination,
+wouldn't you grow more of those fruits on a bit of blank, sunny wall
+than on a perfect trellis work of messy little pictures and ruffled
+lace and calico hangings? It's worth your while to think it over, and
+then to summon Mrs. Opdyke to think it over with you. We men want
+space, not gimcracks. But, about his temper, do be discreet and forget
+that I told tales. I supposed of course you knew it, knew it was bound
+to come out now and then. He's got to have some sort of escape valve;
+now all the more, since your father has shut down upon his smoking.
+Really, Olive, that was beastly mean of him, I must say." Dolph turned
+on her accusingly.
+
+"I didn't know he had. Reed always has smoked, I know."
+
+"It was only day before yesterday. I suppose you'd set him down a baby,
+if I hinted that the water came into his eyes, while he was telling me.
+Olive," Dolph flung out the question with a certain desperation; "for
+God's sake, how long has this thing got to go on?"
+
+"Dolph, I don't know."
+
+"Doesn't your father ever say things?"
+
+"Not of that sort. He never does. Besides, seeing Reed, as I do, almost
+every day, it's better that I shouldn't know."
+
+"But you must think," he urged. "Really, Olive, the thing is going on
+all our nerves; anyhow, on mine. I can't see that great, strong fellow
+lie there, all these eight months, and keep steady as he does, and come
+to know him as I'm doing, know he has been, and is, more of a man than
+most of us are ever likely to be: I can't watch him, I tell you, and
+keep my grip on my sense of humour. I like Opdyke better than I like
+most men; I'd miss him more than most. Still, Olive," and the face
+above the fur-lined coat was suddenly grown grim; "watching him as I
+do, I can't help feeling that it would have been a mercy, if only he
+had been killed outright."
+
+"Hush!" Olive turned upon him sternly; sternly she spoke. "That's not
+for us to say, Dolph. There's a plan back of things, you know, and Reed
+is only part of the plan."
+
+There came a short silence. Then Dolph spoke, not angrily, yet with
+decision.
+
+"Olive, I think I am just a little bit ashamed of you for that. I'm
+willing to be a fatalist, and say it was ordained from the beginning
+that Opdyke must be flayed and hung up for the crows of time to pick;
+but as for saying in a hushed voice that he is the especial object of
+some wholly beneficent and divine plan, I can't do it, and I won't. A
+thing like that would be enough to leave a trail of beastliness over
+the whole mass of revealed religion; in the end it would turn one to a
+veritable pagan. Is this the entrance to your bargain counter? Good
+bye, then. And, for heaven's sake, remember that sometimes the personal
+hurt of a thing may blind a man to the ultimate and underlying
+beneficence of the plan that knocked him over. Watch Opdyke, not when
+he is swearing picturesquely, but when his mouth shuts and gets white
+around the corners with the mental pain, not the physical; and then you
+will take in what I mean." And Dolph, his face uncommonly grave and
+overcast, nodded shortly and went on his way, his fists stuffed into
+his pockets and his grim face half buried in his cavernous collar.
+
+And, meanwhile, the poor "puffic' fibbous" lay and fidgetted uneasily,
+while he wondered why Olive Keltridge had chosen that day, of all days,
+to delay her customary call. She was not ill. Ramsdell, his nurse, had
+seen her pass the house, that morning, walking with the swift, alert
+step which Opdyke knew so well, the step that, in the old days, had
+accompanied his boyish explorations of every by-path in the region. No;
+something had detained her. She would surely be in later; and Reed
+strained his ears, hour after hour, to listen for the buzz of the
+front-door bell.
+
+At last it buzzed, and the long form relaxed its stiffening. Half past
+five! That meant the shortest possible time for talk. Still, it would
+be better than nothing; the half-loaf would keep him from going hungry
+to bed. His eyes were eager, as he watched the door. Then the eagerness
+went out of them. The door swung open. Not Olive, but Prather, the
+fussy little novelist, came in. Opdyke's lean fingers shut savagely
+upon the rug that covered him. It would have been a relief if he could
+have torn it into tatters.
+
+Later, that night, after Ramsdell had shunted him back into bed, and
+had covered him up as carefully as one covers a six-months baby, and
+had put the room in order for the night, and then had uttered his
+nightly query if that was "really hall, sir," left to himself, Reed
+Opdyke set out to become very philosophical as concerned his
+predicament. He merely succeeded in becoming very conscious of his
+utter, aching loneliness, the loneliness which only comes to those
+suddenly deprived of action.
+
+Of course, he acknowledged to himself, a man of his training and
+experience ought to have untold possibilities of interest inherent in
+himself. He ought to be able to dip a bucket into his brain, and pull
+it up, dripping with all sorts of new and amusing thoughts which should
+keep him brilliant company for hours and hours. He ought to be able to
+lose the consciousness of the narrow present in the wide sweep of his
+past memories. He ought to be able to blockade his mind to any
+speculations as concerned his future usefulness by raising up a perfect
+barricade of past memories, and then by sitting down on top of the
+barricade and gloating because it was a little higher than that upbuilt
+by the next man.
+
+Moreover, when those purely personal interests failed him, if purely
+personal interests did ever fail a man, he had only to summon Ramsdell
+and set him to reading aloud to him. To be sure, Ramsdell had a trick
+of chopping up his sentences into separate words, as the primary-school
+child spells its words by separate letters. Still, if it destroyed
+somewhat of the sense, it at least increased the interest, since only
+the most profound attention could discover the pith of any paragraph,
+when every syllable in that paragraph was uttered with the same
+deliberate stress.
+
+And then there was his father. To Opdyke's certain knowledge, the good
+professor curtailed by hours and hours and hours his more congenial
+occupations for the sake of helping his son to work out the chess
+problems in which they both were taking a perfunctory delight. Reed did
+unfeignedly enjoy his father's company; but that was no reason he
+should reduce him to a captivity akin to his own. How long had it
+lasted, anyhow? May, June--nine months. And, in all that time, Olive
+never had missed, until to-day.
+
+Opdyke made a wry face at the darkness. So he had come back to that,
+after all the fuss. What a kid he was, despite his six-feet three, and
+the time he had gone under the knife, unwincing, but fully conscious,
+because his heart was weak just then and the doctors were afraid of
+anaesthetics! Afterwards, when the affair was safely over, they had said
+things about his pluck. And now here he was, bewailing his fate because
+Olive had, just the once, failed to put in her appearance for her daily
+call. Pluck be hanged! And Olive had been wonderfully loyal, all these
+months. Knowing her popularity abroad and her busy life at home, he
+could not fail to be aware, when he stopped to think about it, that she
+must have given up any amount of pleasanter engagements, for the simple
+sake of coming to see him.
+
+What made her do it, anyway? Liking? Conscience?
+
+Opdyke gritted his teeth. One accepts liking with all due gratitude,
+however far it may be removed from any sentiment. It is a wholly
+different thing to feel one's self the object of a conscientious
+visitation. In the latter case, one longs to throw a whiskbroom at the
+head of the entering guest, longs to have it hit him, brush end on.
+Moreover, it is a peculiarity of self-communion in the watches of the
+night, to have the least lovely theory strike one as the more
+unassailable. Therefore, without delay, Reed Opdyke adopted the belief
+in Olive's conscientious devotedness to his welfare. Indeed, between
+the pangs where the points of his new theory pricked him sorely, he
+found plenty of room to wonder why the idea had not occurred to him
+till then. What an insufferable ass he was, to have been thinking that
+her frequent calls had been due to any other motive! He had been
+looking upon himself, in spite of his flatness, as being to all intents
+and purposes her social equal. Now, without warning, he was driven to
+relegate himself to the lower levels of a sort of all-year Lenten
+penance.
+
+All-year! Yes, that was it. That was the secret of her failure to come
+in, that day. Or, rather, for Opdyke was nothing, if not accurate, the
+day before. It was to-morrow now. The clock had struck one, long ago.
+Or was it half-past? He always did lose count, in those three
+successive ones. Anyway, Olive's benevolent zeal had flagged a little,
+before the demands made by a chronic case. Opdyke gritted his teeth
+anew, as he acknowledged to himself that he was fast becoming
+desperately chronic. Then his breath caught at the word. The worst of
+his forecastings had never hit on anything so bad as that. And all the
+others knew it; perhaps they had known it for some time. That was the
+reason, of course, that the number of his calls had been falling off a
+good deal lately; their charitable courage had ebbed and then ended
+before so permanent a proposition.
+
+Olive had known it, too; her father would have told her first of all.
+And, until now, her loyalty had still held good. Dolph, too, would know
+it. Indeed, they all of them had known it, all with the sole exception
+of himself, the victim. They had known it and had talked it over
+together, had talked him over, him, Reed Opdyke, late consulting
+engineer for the Colorado Limited--
+
+And then, across the stillness of the dusky room, there came a sound,
+husky, strangled, a sound strangely like a sob.
+
+Next morning, Opdyke faced the doctor, wan, but plucky.
+
+"Doctor," he said; "I want those fellows to come up from New York
+again, to look me over."
+
+The doctor stared at him, a moment.
+
+"What's the use?" he said then.
+
+Reed's smile was grim.
+
+"That's what I want to know. It's time that they found out, if they're
+ever going to."
+
+The doctor's glasses fell off with a click, and then hung, swinging,
+from their thick black cord. When their oscillation had all ended,--
+
+"What has started up your curiosity just now, Reed?"
+
+"Signs of the times, I suppose," Reed answered crisply. "What's more,
+doctor, I don't quite like them."
+
+Bending forward, the doctor laid a steady hand upon the lean wrist
+beside him. As he had supposed, the pulse was leaping with a furious
+unsteadiness.
+
+"Who taught a mere engineer like you to read the signs?" he demanded.
+
+The pulse raced a little faster. Then Reed replied,--
+
+"My inherent common sense."
+
+"Your inherent self-conceit, you'd better say," the doctor retorted
+curtly. "What's more, you lay awake to read them? Three quarters of the
+night? Yes? I thought so. Next time, though, I'll trouble you to let
+your signs alone. You've got to learn their alphabet straight, before
+you go to work to get much meaning out of them. Anyway, they are my
+care, not yours." Then, as the pulse steadied down a little, the doctor
+spoke more gently. "Boy, what is it that you need to know?"
+
+Under the strong, heedful fingers, the pulse gave one great leap,
+stopped, then fell to pounding madly. Meanwhile, there came a
+tightening of Opdyke's lips. Then he said, with a voice devoid of any
+intonation,--
+
+"Doctor, I think it has come to where I need to know the outcome of all
+this."
+
+"Reed boy, I thought so." The doctor's hand, leaving the wrist, came to
+rest upon the nearer shoulder with a grip which was like a benediction.
+"It has been a fearful time of waiting. I wish I could tell you what
+the end will be; but--Reed, I can't."
+
+"You mean you won't," Opdyke corrected him a little sharply.
+
+But Doctor Keltridge forgave the sharpness, as his eyes rested on the
+drawn, white face.
+
+"I mean I can't," he iterated. "Reed, that's the damned cruelty of the
+whole position, for you and for us who care for you. It would have been
+any amount easier to have accepted things at their worst, months ago,
+than to keep on in this grilling indecision, fearing everything and yet
+hanging on to every vestige of hope for something better. Don't think I
+haven't been realizing that, my boy, ever since they brought you in and
+tucked you up in that infernal bed. It wouldn't have been one half so
+hard for you, then, or since, if you'd known that you'd step down and
+out of it at any given time, or even that you were there to stay for
+ever. It's the uncertainty that kills. And that--"
+
+"Well?" Reed asked him steadily.
+
+"Is just as great as ever."
+
+"You mean?"
+
+The doctor straightened in his chair, stiffening himself to administer
+the bitter draught.
+
+"That the dozen best surgeons in the country never could agree on it,
+whether you will come out of this thing, or not. All we can do is to
+grip our courage, and leave the matter--"
+
+"On the knees of Allah?" Reed asked a little bitterly.
+
+The doctor's reply was grave.
+
+"Yes, Reed. Upon the knees of Allah and within the hands of modern
+science. They are bound to work together, in a case like this."
+
+The grip upon Reed's shoulder tightened for a minute. Then it fell
+away, and again the supple fingers shut upon Reed's wrist.
+
+"It's no especial use to preach to you about keeping up your courage,
+Reed. You're bound to do that, being you. I only wish I could have
+given you a squarer answer to your question; but--I can't. Now, about
+the surgeons: you'd like to have them come up again?"
+
+Reed shook his head, and the gesture was a weary one.
+
+"No use, doctor. I believe you--now. I had thought you were putting me
+off, out of a mistaken sense of friendship, and that I'd be able to
+worm the facts of the case from them. However, now you admit that the
+present uncertainty is the worst thing of all, I'm ready to take your
+word--only--it hurts! All night, I've been bracing myself to take it,
+and now nobody knows when it will come, or how." For a little while, he
+lay quite still; and the doctor sat still beside him, waiting. At last,
+Reed looked up with a forced alertness. "How is Olive?" he inquired,
+quite in his ordinary tone.
+
+Instantly the doctor's face changed, lost its look of waiting strain,
+grew frankly worried.
+
+"Reed, I wish I knew," he said.
+
+"Is she ill?" Opdyke's voice sharpened.
+
+"No; she's all right, only something has upset her. Didn't she come
+here, yesterday? No? I thought she was in here, every day; and maybe
+that--" The doctor checked himself abruptly.
+
+A ghost of a smile flitted across Reed's face, although the hair still
+lay damp upon his temples.
+
+"That we had been fighting, doctor?" he inquired. "Your fatherly fears
+misled you. I haven't seen her for two days."
+
+"Queer!" It was evident that Doctor Keltridge, as he rose, was thinking
+things out loud. "She was all right at breakfast, jolly as you please.
+Then she went out on some errands. I was out for luncheon, and so
+missed her. When she came down to dinner, she hadn't any appetite and
+was very feverish. What's more, if it had been anybody but Olive, I'd
+have vowed she'd cried her eyes out, all the afternoon."
+
+"And this morning?" Reed's accent showed that he was profoundly
+worried. Tears, indeed, were out of all harmony with his experience of
+Olive Keltridge.
+
+The doctor's reply came crisply.
+
+"Apparently, she'd cried them in again." Then once more he bent above
+the couch where Opdyke lay. "Hang on to the tail of every sort of hope,
+Reed," he bade him cheerily. "It's not an especially amusing
+occupation; but it is about the only thing for us to do at present.
+I'll look in on you, in the morning, to make sure how you slept. By the
+way," he tossed the last words back across the threshold; "as long as
+you haven't much else upon your hands, I think I'll order Olive to come
+down here, and let you cheer her up a little." And, before Reed could
+answer, he was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN
+
+
+If Reed Opdyke had gained any inkling of the wide swath of woe and
+consequent spiritual doubtings that he was cutting among the closest of
+his personal friends, he would have fallen to plucking out his hair in
+mingled rage and shamed amusement. Mercifully, however, that
+humiliating knowledge was denied him. As a rule, one keeps that sort of
+questionings from their subject; as a rule, he is the last person in
+the world to be aware of them.
+
+Reed Opdyke, then, was thoroughly perplexed, next afternoon, when
+Brenton walked in upon him. The change in the young rector, more than
+usually obvious, that afternoon, took Opdyke by surprise. He had gained
+no inkling that anything was going really wrong, in that direction. To
+all outward seeming, Scott Brenton ought to have been riding on the
+crest of the ecclesiastical wave. In worldly parlance, Saint Peter's
+Parish was on the boom. The administration of it had completely
+outgrown Brenton's time and strength, and a curate was in prospect,
+with a deaconess or two lurking in the more remote perspective.
+
+Brenton himself, meanwhile, had been too full of work for making many
+calls. He had telephoned to Opdyke, nearly every day, had sent him
+clever articles to read, and things of that sort; but he had not been
+to see his old friend, since the last day of the year. Pastoral
+conversation had never been especially popular between the two men; yet
+each of them was well aware that, all things considered, an old-year
+call was a more fitting visitation than a new-year one for Opdyke. At
+least one knew the worst of the old year, and some comfort could be
+taken out of that. Indeed, next morning, Olive Keltridge wished that
+she had followed out the rector's plan. However, Opdyke's courage was
+better than her own. When she stood up to go away, he wished her a
+happy New Year with a nonchalance apparently quite genuine and free
+from envy. Nevertheless, something in his accent brought the stinging
+tears to Olive's eyes. Another year, such as the past eight months--
+
+"Ditto to you, Reed!" she answered gayly. "I do hope it will find you
+back in the field again."
+
+He nodded. Then,--
+
+"But think how lonesome you would be," he reminded her.
+
+And Olive went her way, thinking. Indeed, she thought so earnestly
+about the fact that it was some time before she noticed that the
+phrase, still ringing in her ears, was in the optative, not in the
+simple future which she herself would have used in that connection. Was
+her father keeping things back from her, by way of helping her to
+maintain her poise? Did Reed himself know things of which she was in
+ignorance? Foolish, especially when they were friends and nothing more!
+It was a friend's place to know the worst of things, and help him bear
+them. The questions, though, stayed with her for many days. They had
+been, indeed, at the back of her abstraction, when Dolph Dennison had
+greeted her, that January morning.
+
+Mingled with them, too, had been some other questions, questions akin
+to those lashing Scott Brenton's brain. However, in the case of Olive,
+they were incidental. With Brenton, they shook the foundations of his
+whole professional career.
+
+Indeed, it seemed to Brenton, looking down upon the still, straight
+figure of his friend, that it was little short of the incredible that
+Reed Opdyke, the hilarious, the irresponsible, could be the present
+cause and focus of a storm which was bidding fair to make a shipwreck
+of his life. If only Brenton had been aware how, long ago, Opdyke had
+been detailed to show him life as it was, and to teach him what an ass
+he easily might become, there would have been a certain fitness, to his
+mind, in the later situation. Once more Opdyke had been detailed to
+show him life as it really was, life and some other things, to point
+out to him, not what an ass he might, but what a hypocrite he had,
+become.
+
+Nowadays, it was that latter word which Brenton was using, as a
+spiritual flail, upon himself. Reed Opdyke's overthrow no longer filled
+the whole horizon of his doubtings. It was merely the starting-point
+whence he had embarked on a voyage long and perilous. At first, he only
+had felt a vague suspicion concerning the inherent justice and clemency
+of the manifestations of special Providence, a little wondering whether
+the God whom he had chosen to preach to all men was of necessity so
+much more merciful and fatherly in his dealing with the sons of men
+than was the irate God of all the line of Parson Wheelers. They would
+have laid down the law quite frankly that Reed Opdyke had been
+overtaken and cut down, in revenge for his more or less hereditary
+sins. He was holding forth to the effect that Reed had been smitten
+sorely, regretfully, in order that his spiritual betterment be effected
+with all due promptness, and with all due attention from his fellow
+men. To how much, after all, did the difference amount?
+
+Sunday after Sunday during those interminable eight months when Reed
+had lain still and gritted his teeth to keep himself from waxing too
+profane, he himself, Scott Brenton, robed in the stainless garb of his
+holy calling, had stood up before his people and stained his conscience
+by uttering platitudes to that effect. Then, sermon over and the
+service, he had gone away and lavished upon Reed Opdyke a purely human
+sympathy that was totally unlike the exalted pity of the priest. In
+other words, as concerned Reed Opdyke, Brenton's attitude was
+two-faced, human, priestly; two-faced, and the two faces were mutually
+antagonistic.
+
+Worst of all, the doubtings did not focus themselves upon the solitary
+instance. They spread and spread, until they honeycombed his entire
+belief. Was God sometimes a little bit vindictive? Did the All-merciful
+have moods that would have shamed created man? Did the All-Father now
+and then punish, out of sheer malevolence, or in an attempt to get even
+with man for the results of instincts He had put into him at first
+creation? Was that first creation final in its wisdom; or had it been a
+partial blunder, needing the interference of a heaven-sent, earth-born
+Intercessor to set the matter right? Could the All-Wise make a blunder?
+If not, then why the Atoning Son? In short, aside from some mysterious
+force which had set certain laws to rolling like mammoth, ever-growing
+snowballs down the slopes of time and on into a cold, bleak eternity
+where everything was swept up in their courses, was there ever any--
+
+At this point in his never-ending circle, Scott Brenton usually started
+to his feet, seized his hat and stick and shut his study door behind
+him. All out-doors was too small to think in. Violent exercise was the
+one fit setting for such thought. In the end, though, the wish for
+exercise only took him down across the valley, and spent itself just as
+he reached the river's brink. There, on the long white bridge, he stood
+by the half-hour at a time, his arms folded on the rail, his eyes fixed
+vaguely on the wintry current, a steel-gray stretch of sliding,
+slipping water down which the rough white ice cakes came floating,
+drifting silently, relentlessly, unendingly, to crash against the stone
+piers of the bridge. In that same way, out of the gray, bleak
+perspective of his thoughts, the doubts came floating, drifting down
+upon him with the same relentlessness, to crash against the foundations
+of his belief. Between the two of them, however, there was this
+difference: the piers were never chipped or shaken by the ice cakes. He
+could not say as much as that for his beliefs.
+
+It was all very well to choose, as he had done, a more elastic creed,
+to fling his life's allegiance into a communion whose tenets were so
+framed as to adjust themselves to the strain of purely individual
+interpretation. One must have tenets to interpret. What happened, when
+they became untenable? One might construe the Nicene Creed into a round
+dozen different 'ologies. A mere framework, a skeleton of belief such
+as the Apostles' Creed was capable of no such reconstruction. One
+either believed it, or one did not. Unless--Did anybody ever believe
+any one thing in its unmodified entirety? Did anybody ever give a
+categorical denial to any clause of any creed? That was the worst of
+the whole matter. Half-doubts and half-beliefs crisscrossed and
+interlaced at every point. One day's doctrine was the next day's error.
+It was well-nigh impossible to draw a straight line, no matter how
+short, and take one's stand upon it, and say out boldly _I believe_,
+and then add just as boldly _I shall keep on believing_.
+
+After all, though, that was what he professed to do. The outward
+setting of his life, from the early celebration of a Sunday morning
+down to the virtuous reversal of his collar buttons, was the badge of
+his profession. In his secret heart, as the Advent season came and
+went, and as the Lenten penances drew near, Scott Brenton had no way of
+telling where in reality he stood; yet, day by day and week by week, he
+had to step forth before his congregation and toilsomely erect a
+platform of belief upon which, in the end, his feet refused to mount.
+Instead, with every semblance of priestly humility, he stood aside and
+assisted his hearers to clamber up ahead of him. Once there, he knew
+that he could count upon their smug enjoyment of their own eminence to
+make them forget to notice whether or not he took his stand beside
+them.
+
+Of course, he despised himself acutely. Of course, he had hours and
+moods when he felt that he must lift up his voice and shout aloud to
+all men--What? That he did not know exactly what he did believe? For,
+in reality, that was all the whole pother was amounting to. What was
+the use in starting the alarm, when the whole great crisis might be
+merely a matter of imagination, of indigestion, even, as Doctor
+Keltridge had diagnosed it? In that case, the best, the only remedy was
+work.
+
+And work Scott Brenton did. The parish was growing, month by month. The
+mere detail of its executive alone was enough to tax the strength of
+most men. Brenton managed it, however; he also contrived to get into
+the day's work as much of pastoral visitation as he could accomplish,
+without running into the adulation with which he was uncomfortably
+aware he was surrounded. The evenings and a good portion of the nights
+he devoted to his sermons which never had been so brilliant as now,
+never so vibrant with the essential truths of personal morality, of
+earnest service. Indeed, his professional life, just then, seemed
+rounding itself into a never-ending circle: the harder he worked, the
+more inspiring were his sermons, thus broadening and deepening his
+grasp upon his hearers. And this, in turn, put new vitality into his
+parish needs, and so increased his work past any computation.
+
+It would have been no especial wonder, then, that this revolving circle
+should shut him in entirely from any chance to see an old chum like
+Reed Opdyke. Opdyke himself accepted the explanation. Brenton knew it
+was false, and flagrantly so. He longed acutely to sit down beside his
+old friend, to unburden himself to the very dregs and then to sort over
+the dregs, discussing them and judging them in the light of Opdyke's
+old, shrewd common sense and in the clearer light of Opdyke's new and
+illuminating experience. How could he, though, when the whole mental
+situation had evolved itself over his kicking against the pricks
+administered to his old-time idol? To discuss the matter with Reed
+Opdyke would have been equivalent to sticking a knife into him, and
+then inviting him to take a microscope and study the composition of the
+drops that oozed up around the knife blade.
+
+And then, one day, he yielded to temptation, and went to call upon Reed
+Opdyke, not to indulge in theoretical discussion concerning the
+accident viewed as an exponent of universal truths; but for the simple
+sake of seeing his old friend and exchanging greetings. Indeed, where
+was the use of wasting the good material of friendship by seeking to
+convert it to a touchstone whereby to measure up one's theological
+beliefs? Reed was Reed, albeit flattened out upon his long, lean back,
+and not a culture-pan for psychological germs.
+
+A good deal to his own regret, Brenton met Olive Keltridge on the
+Opdyke's steps.
+
+"I'm so glad you've come, Mr. Brenton," she said cordially, as she gave
+him her hand in greeting. "Reed has been wondering what had become of
+you. No; not that, exactly. My father and I both had told him that
+Saint Peter's was working you to death. Still, he has missed you, and
+his father is actually pathetic in his mourning. He told me, yesterday,
+that you had never seen his new hood. Really, it sounded rather
+feminine, his pride in that new hood of his. You'd have thought it must
+be a creation of chiffon and ermine, not of ordinary brick and mortar.
+How is Mrs. Brenton?"
+
+"Quite well, thank you."
+
+The maid was slow about appearing, and Olive chatted on, by way of
+filling up the time.
+
+"I'm glad. It is two weeks or so, since I have seen her. She told me
+then that she hardly caught a glimpse of you, all day long. Indeed, she
+was almost as pathetic about it as Professor Opdyke. It really is too
+bad for the church to keep you quite so busy."
+
+"But, if it is my work?" Brenton interrupted banally, for, in his
+secret heart, he was painfully aware that it was not the church alone
+which kept him so preoccupied that his preoccupation had come to be an
+occupation on its own account.
+
+"Your work needn't be suicidal," Olive objected. "My father, even, says
+it is taking it out of you rather badly, and he insists that they must
+hurry about the curate. Seven hours a day is enough for any man, he
+says; and he declares that you are working twenty. In fact," Olive
+looked up at him to carry home her admonition; "he says that he has
+warned you more than once that you must slow down a little, or else
+stop."
+
+"At least, that would be restful." Brenton spoke more to himself than
+Olive.
+
+But she turned on him.
+
+"Reed hasn't found it so," she said.
+
+Brenton's face changed, clouded.
+
+"That is an extreme case, Miss Keltridge." Then, with an effort, he
+changed the subject and became frankly personal. "How is Opdyke getting
+on?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"He isn't getting on, unless you count as the _on_ a distinct gain in
+the beauty of holiness. No," she interrupted him with a sudden gesture;
+"I don't mean the kind of holiness you preach, on Sunday; but the kind
+we both of us admire, on Monday morning."
+
+"Is there a difference?" he queried, while his gray eyes searched her
+face.
+
+She met his eyes unflinchingly.
+
+"Isn't there? Preacher that you are, I defy you to deny it."
+
+And then the maid opened the door before them, and they passed in.
+
+Once in the hall, however, Olive changed her mind about going up to
+Reed's room.
+
+"I think I'll wait, Mr. Brenton," she said suddenly. "Really, I have
+nothing much ahead of me, to-day. I can come in later, just as well;
+and you are a novelty, in these latter days. Go on alone, and talk
+man-talk to Reed. It will do him any amount more good than dozens of my
+visitations. Just don't tell him I was here, and then he won't have any
+qualms about holding on to you till the last possible minute. I'll come
+in again."
+
+"But--"
+
+"No _but_ about it. I tell you he needs men. In fact, we all do, now
+and then, no matter how we try to veil the fact. If you want proof, ask
+any sane woman whether she would rather go out to luncheon or to
+dinner. Granted her sincerity isn't complicated with questionings about
+a frock, she will declare for dinner, every time. Go in, though. This
+is most irrelevant. Moreover, by way of living up to my own theory, I'm
+going to take the time when you are out of the way, to drop in on Mrs.
+Brenton. Good bye, and--be very good to Reed."
+
+The door shut behind her, and Brenton went on up the stairs, wondering,
+at every step, what had been the meaning of her final phrase. Meaning
+it obviously had. Olive rarely talked at random to any of her
+acquaintances; never at all, it seemed to Brenton, in thinking backward
+over the way, from point to point, her mind apparently had been
+marching on beside his own. Did her intuitions never fail her, in the
+case of any man? Or was it that her clairvoyance focussed itself on
+him? Did she, indeed, actually comprehend her old friend, Opdyke, one
+half so clearly as she did himself? Priest though he was, the man in
+him had an instant of hoping not.
+
+It was now two years and more, since Olive and Brenton first had met.
+In the forced intimacy of a narrow social circle, they had been thrown
+together often; the churchly relation between Brenton and his senior
+warden had increased the frequency. As a rule, the meetings had been at
+the Keltridges'. The doctor liked Scott; Kathryn did not like Olive.
+However, though the invitations had been nearly always upon the one
+side, in any case, hostess or guest, there had been no way of
+eradicating Olive.
+
+Olive and Brenton, then, had met almost constantly, during those last
+two years. They had discussed together quite impersonally all things
+under the sun and above the moon. Their personal talks had been few and
+very short. None the less, Scott Brenton was quite well aware that no
+one in the world knew his real self so well as Olive Keltridge. Aware
+of it, however, he was fully conscious that the fact caused him no
+regrets at all. Catie, as he still called her on occasion, should, of
+course, have been the one to comprehend him; but, like the cicada, he
+merely iterated "Catie didn't." And comprehension is the primal need of
+every man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
+
+
+Olive found Kathryn Brenton in the extreme of disarray. The littered
+room was as unlovely as the careless costume, and Kathryn's personal
+grooming matched them both. It really was not her fault, she explained
+in fretful apology. She had not expected to see a soul, that morning;
+but the maid had given warning all at once, really apropos of nothing,
+and was up-stairs, packing. They were such selfish creatures. It was up
+and out, at a minute's notice, and you can take care of yourself as
+best you can. If she had behaved herself, and not gone off in a
+tantrum, she would have been there to open the door, and then Olive
+wouldn't have caught her in that old dressing gown she had put on just
+for breakfast.
+
+All this was delivered volubly in the front hall, while Kathryn closed
+the door behind her guest and then drew down the blinds, by way of
+hospitable intimation to any later comers that she was not at home.
+That done, she led the way into the living-room, while Olive, at her
+heels, registered her impression of any woman who would be willing thus
+to present herself above the breakfast table to any man, least of all
+her husband. However, it was plain that, with Kathryn and her husband,
+the least of all had become the most, and that, too, at an epoch when,
+if ever, Kathryn needed to take the very greatest care to fix upon
+herself the seal of lifelong and admiring devotion. Of course, there
+might be such a thing as a devotion void of any admiration. Olive
+Keltridge, however, was not a woman to accept that sort of thing.
+Neither, she reflected swiftly, was Scott Brenton quite the sort of man
+to offer it.
+
+Meanwhile, Kathryn, seated in a chair a good deal lower than the laws
+of perfect grace dictated, huddled her shabby dressing gown about her,
+ran a vaguely apologetic hand through her puggy pompadour, and went on
+with her domestic narration.
+
+"It's so queer what sets them off, Miss Keltridge. One never knows when
+they will fly up in a temper; at least, the kind I seem to get. I never
+have the luck you do. Why, you have had the same second girl, ever
+since we moved here."
+
+"The? Oh, Margaret? Yes, she has been with us about nine years." Olive
+smiled. "She seems almost like a member of the family, by now."
+
+Kathryn shook her head in self-pity. The self-pity loosened a little
+tail of hair which arose, rampant, from the exact middle of her crown.
+However, Kathryn lacked a mirror within range, and so she talked on
+quite as contentedly, despite the waving, waggling tail.
+
+"Yes, so many other people seem to get that kind of girls, so devoted
+and such competent ones; but, for my part, I don't see where they find
+them. I pay the very highest prices, and I always look up their
+references; but they all are just alike. I have had nine different
+cooks, the last five months, and each one was a little worse than--"
+
+"I met Mr. Brenton just now," Olive cut in, with decision.
+
+"Did you?" his wife inquired indifferently. "I didn't know he had gone
+out."
+
+"Yes." Olive's decision increased a little. "I thought he wasn't
+looking very well."
+
+"Scott? Oh, he's well enough. What should ail him?" Kathryn loosened
+her soggy draperies for an instant, then tightened them in the reverse
+direction. "He hasn't a worry to his name, hardly a care."
+
+Struggle as she would, Olive knew her accent was becoming more dry with
+every sentence that she uttered.
+
+"I should have supposed the church--"
+
+"Church? That's nothing. At least, it's only in his line of business,
+the thing that he set his heart upon and trained for. I wonder what he
+would say, if he had the care of this great house."
+
+"It is larger than most rectories," Olive made polite assent.
+
+But swiftly Kathryn retrieved her blunder.
+
+"Of course," she added; "I always have been accustomed to a large
+house. It is only that this one seems to me inconvenient. The back
+stairs are so very central, and the telephones are so badly placed, one
+in the study, and the other away out in the back of the hall. Really,
+you would think, to see them, that the rector and the servants were the
+only ones to be considered, and not the housekeeper at all."
+
+Stolidly regardless of the criticism, Olive returned to her former
+theme. She did this of a distinct purpose, too. It seemed to her to be
+quite incredible that the woman before her could be blind to her
+husband's haggard face. None the less, watching Kathryn, she could not
+in sincerity accuse her of any shamming.
+
+"It really has worried us, my father and me, that Mr. Brenton hasn't
+looked quite as strong lately, as when he came here," she insisted.
+
+"Oh, I think he is quite well. Men," Kathryn gave a vindictive sort of
+flap to the front breadths of her dressing gown; "never know what it is
+to be really ill. I tell Scott, if he were in my place--"
+
+In mercy to probabilities, Olive interrupted.
+
+"Saint Peter's has grown so fast, since he came here," she said.
+
+Kathryn promptly took umbrage at the singular number of the pronoun.
+
+"I'm sure we've done our best," she answered tartly. "It has been hard
+work, though, in such a dead old town as this."
+
+"But, with all the college girls--" Olive was beginning.
+
+Kathryn cut her short.
+
+"They count for nothing in the parish. They just come to church, when
+they get up in season; that's about all. Of course, it would be a good
+thing if they did count for more. The poor old church is in need of
+something young and lively; now and then it seems to me to be fairly
+doddering. Poor Scott feels it, too. He can't help it. Every man and
+woman in the congregation was born, ready made, with a whole set of
+prejudices, born in a rut that nothing can break down. I tell him--"
+
+Once more Olive interrupted. Indeed, it was her only method of driving
+in an entering wedge of speech.
+
+"That is what we old New Englanders love, Mrs. Brenton," she said, with
+a sweetness that was almost acid. "Remember that we and our ancestors
+have lived in these same houses since King George the Third's day, and
+then you will forgive us for some of our ready-made prejudices."
+
+Kathryn glanced up suspiciously. Then she sought to flay her guest with
+all discretion.
+
+"Really? How very tiresome you must have found it!" she made answer.
+
+"Not at all. It's the other thing that we find so tiresome," Olive
+assured her, not without some malice.
+
+"Where did you see Mr. Brenton?" Kathryn asked her quite abruptly.
+
+"He was going to call on Mr. Opdyke."
+
+"Reed, or the professor?"
+
+This time, Olive's accent was not to be mistaken.
+
+"Mr. Reed Opdyke," she said.
+
+Kathryn ignored the rebuke completely.
+
+"How is Reed?" she queried.
+
+Then Olive gave it up, and left her to her chosen methods.
+
+"About the same."
+
+"Isn't there anything I can do for him yet?" Kathryn inquired, with an
+abrupt letting down of her terse dignity. "It does seem a shame I can't
+do something to help the poor fellow along, especially when it is so
+many years that I have known him. It's not as if he were a mere
+acquaintance, of course, and I want him to feel quite at liberty to
+send for me, whenever he wants me."
+
+"I am sure he does, Mrs. Brenton," Olive assured her, with gentle
+malice, for not in vain was "the poor fellow" phrase rankling in her
+mind.
+
+"Then why in the world doesn't he send?" Kathryn asked rather
+injudiciously.
+
+Olive dodged the only direct answer she could have made.
+
+"Perhaps he shrinks a little--" she was starting.
+
+Kathryn, still regardless of the waggling little tail, shook her head
+in vehement negation.
+
+"Oh, he wouldn't be shy with me, Miss Keltridge. Remember, I'm quite an
+old married woman now; there's no reason he should feel at
+all--Besides, he sees you," she added, her voice sharpening with the
+sudden recollection.
+
+Olive laughed.
+
+"Me? Oh, I'm totally amorphous, Mrs. Brenton, a mere lump of old
+associations. It's good for Mr. Opdyke to have somebody to giggle with
+occasionally."
+
+Kathryn's voice betrayed her dislike of the flippant answer.
+
+"Poor dear man! I guess he doesn't giggle very often. Really, Miss
+Keltridge, I sometimes wonder if you realize how very sad it is."
+
+"Very likely not," Olive said dryly.
+
+"No; that's what I say. You see him so often that you get used to it.
+It is so easy to take such things as a matter of course."
+
+"You think so?" The dryness was increasing. "It never had occurred to
+me to feel like that."
+
+"No?" Then all at once Kathryn dropped her antagonisms and smiled
+across at Olive. "Dear Miss Keltridge, I don't want to gossip; but,
+between old friends like ourselves, one can speak out. Has it ever
+seemed strange to you that we none of us know just what is wrong with
+Reed Opdyke? Or do you know?"
+
+"I have no idea at all."
+
+"But don't you ever wonder?"
+
+"No; it's not my business," Olive said curtly. Then her sense of
+downright honour undermined her curtness. "Yes; after all, I suppose
+that, being human, I do wonder now and then."
+
+"Then you don't know, either?"
+
+"How should I?"
+
+"You see him so very often."
+
+Olive stiffened.
+
+"Really, Mrs. Brenton, it's not a thing one talks about."
+
+"Oh?" Kathryn's accent was indescribable. "I supposed he'd talk to you.
+Or haven't you ever asked him?"
+
+"I have not."
+
+Kathryn leaned a little nearer.
+
+"After all, Miss Keltridge, doesn't that seem a little bit--"
+
+Olive waited.
+
+"Self--er--centred?"
+
+"I don't see how. Mr. Opdyke would tell me, if he cared to have me
+know."
+
+"Unless he thought you would find it out by intuition," Kathryn
+suggested balmily, as she leaned back in her chair and smoothed her
+dressing gown.
+
+It was with difficulty that Olive downed her amusement.
+
+"Intuition, as a rule, doesn't count for much with spines and internal
+injuries," she said.
+
+Kathryn once more became eager.
+
+"Then it is his spine, poor dear man?"
+
+And once more Olive became dry.
+
+"I should think it highly probable from the way they are treating him."
+
+"Terrible; isn't it?" And Olive almost forgave her hostess all things,
+for the sake of the one word of honest and spontaneous pity, devoid of
+all "poor dears." Then her forgiveness waned. "However, if I were in
+your place, I'd ask him outright what is the trouble. I think the
+Opdykes owe it to their friends to speak out and end the mystery, and
+put a stop to all the gossip."
+
+"Is there gossip?" Olive queried disdainfully, as she arose.
+
+Still seated, Kathryn stared up at her with eyes that were determined
+to lose no flicker of an answering confession.
+
+"Of course. In a case like this, there's bound to be. There's every
+sort of story floating about. Some people even go so far as to say that
+they only brought home the top end of him; that all that shows below
+his waist is only a padded roll of blankets. That's one reason I want
+so much to see him; I know I could tell whether there was any truth in
+such absurd stories." She pulled herself up short; then went on with a
+change of tone. "Of course, though, what I really want is to help him
+pass the time, if I can. He must be very lonely for thoroughly
+congenial people. Must you go? Be sure you give the poor dear man my
+message. And good bye. Next time, I do hope I shall have a respectable
+maid to let you out. I'm quite ashamed--Good bye."
+
+Out on the steps in the clean February air and sunshine, Olive drew in
+a deep, full breath.
+
+"Poor, dear old Reed!" she said. And then, in quite another tone, "Poor
+Mr. Brenton! How totally impossible she is!"
+
+And, meanwhile, the "puffic' fibbous," quite unaware of their
+discussion of his personality and its injuries, lay smiling mirthfully
+up into the eyes of his old friend.
+
+"Spit it out, Brenton! Rift it aff yer chist!" he adjured him.
+"Something has gone bad inside your Denmark, and I'm so far kindred to
+the blessed angels that I don't tell any tales."
+
+Brenton squirmed with a physical uneasiness that was an outward and
+visible sign of his spiritual one.
+
+"What's the use?"
+
+"Ease your mind. It's a good thing to get rid of waste matter, if 't is
+waste. Else, if it's any good, it will gain value by being set forth in
+order. Go ahead with your firstly. By the way, why don't you smoke?"
+
+"Because I have a conscience," Brenton told him bluntly.
+
+"Approaching Lent; or on my account? Don't mind me. I rather long for
+the smell of the stuff, even if the taste of it is forbidden me.
+Really, Brenton," and Opdyke looked up at him with singularly unclouded
+eyes; "that's about my present life in epitome. I offer you the idea
+for your next sermon."
+
+"Sermon be hanged! I don't serve up my friends, by way of garnishing my
+theoretical beliefs," Brenton objected shortly.
+
+Opdyke made a wry face.
+
+"That's where you miss your innings, then. I understand, by way of
+Ramsdell, that the Methodist incumbent lately preached a sermon upon
+resignation, and did me the honour of taking me, quite specifically, to
+illustrate his climax. That is what I call fame, Brenton, a greater
+fame than any I ever could have garnered in by way of engineering."
+
+"Beastly thing to do!" Brenton made brief comment.
+
+"Wasn't it? When I get on my legs again, if ever I do, I'll call him
+out and lick him. By the way, the last of my cigars are in that drawer.
+Don't let them spoil. Well, as I was saying, what humbugs you parsons
+are!"
+
+Brenton, digging in the chaos of the drawer before him, lifted up his
+head.
+
+"Aren't we, though!" he said, with sudden energy.
+
+"Hullo!" Reed stared at him in astonishment. "You've found it out?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"How long since?"
+
+Brenton hesitated.
+
+"Six or eight months."
+
+Reed laughed unconcernedly.
+
+"Coincident with my home-coming, Scott? I hope I didn't bring the seeds
+of disaffection with me. But, for a fact, is that the present row?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There came a long silence. Then Reed spoke.
+
+"Brenton, you always were a curiously constructed creature mentally.
+What is the matter? Is your present ecclesiastical harness galling
+you?"
+
+"Yes." Brenton lighted a match with exceeding awkwardness.
+
+"Bedding is inflammable, Brenton," Reed warned him. "Therefore I advise
+you to keep a steady hand. I'm too big a brand for a slim chap like you
+to pluck from the burning, to our mutual comfort. Apropos, there's
+another grand idea for your sermon. You can suppress the naughty
+nicotine motif for the theme, if you choose. But what in thunder, made
+you put on the harness, in the first place?"
+
+"Filial devotion."
+
+"Exactly. I remember. But you chose another pattern, sloughed off the
+work-horse collar of Calvinism in favour of the lighter ritualistic
+bridle, if I may speak picturesquely. You made your choice. Now what's
+the matter? Hitched up too short; or have you kicked over the traces?"
+
+"No; not yet." Brenton spoke grimly, his overcast gray eyes offering a
+curious contrast to the sunny brown ones of the man lying flat and
+still before him.
+
+This time, Reed looked anxious.
+
+"I wouldn't, Scott," he said, and a little note of affection came into
+his tone. "You'll sure be sorry."
+
+"But, if I can't help it?"
+
+"You can." Reed spoke crisply.
+
+"I can't. The whole thing is galling me, I tell you, the whole--"
+Brenton hesitated; "infernal sham." The last two words he flung out
+with a heavy defiance.
+
+"_Sham_ isn't a polite word for that sort of thing," Opdyke answered
+swiftly. "You're the parson, Brenton; I am nothing but a sinner cut
+down in my prime. Still, in your place, I think I wouldn't call it all
+a sham. There's too much good inside it. When one has all the time
+there is, one thinks it out, good and bad, to the bitter end. And
+there's any amount more good than bad in the whole combination."
+
+Brenton nodded; but the nod implied more denial than assent.
+
+"Perhaps," he said slowly. "Still, it's any amount less provable."
+
+"Proof be hanged! You'll never succeed in reducing the moral universe
+to a set of molecular equations, Brenton. Best give it up, and take
+what's left in the most thankful spirit that you can, not let the
+unprovable part of it get on your nerves like this."
+
+Brenton chewed the end of his cigar, as if it had been the cud of his
+spiritual discontent.
+
+"But, by my profession, I am here to preach the truth," he burst out at
+length.
+
+"Preach it, then," Opdyke advised him calmly.
+
+"According to my notion, truth can always be proved."
+
+"Prove it, then," Opdyke advised him, with unabated calm.
+
+"It won't." Brenton spoke with the curt elision of his country
+ancestry.
+
+Opdyke watched him steadily for more than a minute. Then,--
+
+"Brenton, don't make an ass of yourself," he besought his friend. "You
+have befuddled your brain with such big words as _truth_ and _proof_;
+but don't go on your nerves about it. You are doing any amount of good,
+from all accounts, here in the town. If you keep steady and sane,
+you'll come to where you have an influence with a big, big I, and end
+by really counting for something in the place you've chosen. If your
+harness galls you, then pad it up. You can make it fit, if you spend a
+little time on it. But, if you go restive and kick over the traces and
+bolt, you'll do a lot of harm, not only to yourself, but to the people
+who'll go plunging after you, without having brains enough to know just
+why they do it. Yes, I know I am preaching; but what of it? I got the
+habit, years ago," his smile was strangely gentle, strangely full of
+such love as is rarely given by one man to another; "when old Mansfield
+put you in my care. No; I know you weren't aware of it, but he did.
+Anyhow, it has given me a sense of responsibility over you, and I hate
+the notion of lying here on my back, and seeing you preparing to make a
+mess of your whole life, at just this stage of the game."
+
+"Thanks, Opdyke." Brenton shut his hand on the long, nervous fingers,
+shut it and left it there. "But would it be a mess?"
+
+"For the present, yes. Later, it's another question. You've put
+yourself under fire, and you've gone panicky; I know the feeling. I had
+it, first time I saw a premature blast go off and hurt a man, and I
+nearly chucked the whole profession and went into a banking office.
+Later, I steadied, found out that even an occasional killing," he
+winced at his own words, even as he spoke them; "doesn't count for
+much, beside the good done by the total output of a mine. Therefore I
+kept on, studied the mine and shut my eyes to the victims. In the end,
+I steadied, and so will you. However, Scott," and the long, nervous
+fingers shut hard about the hand above them; "I am quite well aware
+that the intermediate stage of funking the side issue is bound to give
+us an occasional bad half-hour. Still, as you love your profession,
+hang on to it by the last little corner, until you steady down."
+
+"Yes." Brenton spoke slowly, while there flashed before him in swift
+alignment all the details for which his profession stood: place and
+popularity and influence, the best of human and social ties, the
+fulfilled ambitions, the closest sort of contacts with his kind. All
+these he saw, as rounded out to their fullest measure. Beside them was
+himself, outwardly active, spiritually as stark and still as was the
+broken body of his friend before him. In that instant, it was given to
+Brenton to measure himself beside his possibilities, and the measure
+was not wholly reassuring. "Yes," he repeated slowly; "but what is
+going to be the final good gained by my hanging on, in case I never
+steady down?"
+
+Reed compressed his lips. Then, out of his own experience, he spoke.
+
+"In that case, at least you'll have had the satisfaction of finding out
+that, science and theology to the contrary notwithstanding, in the
+final end it's solely up to you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
+
+
+"But, really, she wasn't always so impossible," Olive argued above the
+coffee, that night.
+
+"All things are possible to an open mind," her father rejoined
+placidly.
+
+Olive changed her phrase for one more downright.
+
+"Then, if you must have it, she wasn't always so totally vulgar as she
+is now."
+
+"Time always brings development," Doctor Keltridge reminded her
+benignly, while he thrashed about in his cup with a spoon, much as he
+might have wielded a glass rod in a delinquent mixture. Then, his spoon
+poised in mid air, he asked, with a sudden show of curiosity, "On what
+do you base your theory, Olive?"
+
+Olive's reply was feminine, and very convincing to herself.
+
+"Because, if she had been, she never would have been asked out to
+dinner."
+
+"Duty," Doctor Keltridge suggested.
+
+"Well, not twice at the same place, then."
+
+"She doesn't eat with her knife," the doctor responded hopefully.
+"Therefore she must be evolving just a very little."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Because she used to--evidently. That type always does."
+
+Olive laughed.
+
+"Father, I don't believe you ever have really admired Mrs. Brenton,"
+she said.
+
+"No." The doctor spoke with slow decision. "There is no especial reason
+that I should. She is a totally brainless little cus--"
+
+"Father!"
+
+The doctor shot one expressive glance at his horrified daughter. Then,
+with exceeding deliberation, he continued his interrupted word.
+
+"--tomer, and her only place in the moral universe is to act as a leech
+on Brenton's nervous system. The worst of it is, when her beneficent
+work is ended, he'll find out that he is powerless to shake her off.
+It's enough, the watching them, I mean, to make one believe in a
+tentative marriage system, at least within the rural districts. The
+bumpkin comes up to marriageable age, and takes the first--"
+
+"Father!" Olive remonstrated once more. "Mr. Brenton isn't a bumpkin.
+He never was."
+
+"My dear," the doctor set down his empty cup; "who mentioned Brenton,
+anyway? I was merely talking about Brenton's wife."
+
+Olive went a step backward in the conversation.
+
+"She may not literally eat with her knife," she said; "but, at least,
+she does it metaphorically, and then, at the end, she licks it. Yes,
+that's very vulgar; but it is true, and there's nobody but you to hear
+it. Listen. I haven't told you the worst yet." And Olive recounted to
+her father Kathryn Brenton's catechism concerning Opdyke, her manifest
+and merciless curiosity, so thinly veiled behind her avowed desire to
+administer consolation.
+
+When she had finished, the doctor shook his wise gray head.
+
+"Some women are merely pussy cats, Olive, and some of them are
+panthers," he said gravely. "I am glad you told me. I'll put the
+Opdykes on their guard. Reed has seemed to be gaining lately; more
+depends on his nerves than those New York butchers of his are quite
+aware. I do know it, because I've taken care of his mother ahead of
+him; and there are some cases when an old-fashioned doctor with common
+sense and a closet full of family traditions is worth a dozen modern
+surgeons. Reed has been doing a little better lately; you and Dolph
+Dennison, with all your nonsense, are steadying him wonderfully. But
+that she-gargoyle! Olive, she'd have Reed in his coffin, inside of half
+an hour. I'll see that she's kept out on the steps. If she wants to
+kill her husband, I can't help it. She's got her grip on him. I'll be
+hanged, though, if she gets that nose of hers inside Reed Opdyke's
+room."
+
+"I wonder," Olive rested her elbows on the table, and spoke down at her
+interlaced fingers; "wonder why it is we both of us dislike her so."
+
+"I've been her doctor," Doctor Keltridge observed, as if that one fact
+were sufficient explanation.
+
+"But she must have lucid intervals."
+
+"Precious few," the doctor growled. "What's worse, they are getting
+fewer, every week. If I were in Brenton's place, I'd take to drink, and
+use that as an excuse for beating her. He's denied that luxury, though,
+by what she calls his cloth. To hear her talk, you'd think we laymen
+dressed in tissue-paper napkins."
+
+Olive disregarded the digression.
+
+"And yet, she isn't really bad to him."
+
+"Depends on what you call being really bad," the doctor growled again.
+"Of course, she doesn't put senna in his tea, nor take tucks in his
+Sunday trousers; but she does nip off the tips of all his best growths
+with that temper of hers, or else freeze them with her lack of
+comprehension. She's a pachyderm and she's a pig; and, if she keeps on,
+she'll drag her husband to her level. Brenton's got yeast in him,
+Olive, fine, lively yeast. There is no telling what he would rise to,
+if only we could succeed in abolishing her."
+
+"If only she wouldn't allude to him in public as His Reverence!" Olive
+sighed. "It is almost as bad as her coy flirtation with him, during
+sermon time. If I were in his place, I'd brain her."
+
+The doctor pushed his chair back from the table.
+
+"You couldn't," he said concisely. "It's not according to the laws of
+nature."
+
+He started for his laboratory. A moment later, he came back again, his
+coat under his arm, his hair rampant and his tie already gloriously
+askew.
+
+"She can 'Reverence' him all she wants to," he said, casting the words
+at Olive as if they had been an iron projectile; "but she doesn't care
+one grain for him. In fact, she only cares for the materials shut up
+inside her skin. She's a monstrosity of selfishness; that's what she
+is, no more fit to be a rector's wife, wife of a man like Brenton, than
+a tin can of corned beef with a crack in it. She's poisonous, Olive,
+poisonous! Ptomaines aren't in it, by comparison. At least, they're
+sudden; and she drags it out to all infinity. Poor Brenton!" And, with
+a gulp of sympathetic ire, the doctor vanished, this time to be seen no
+more.
+
+Whatever were the doctor's forms of speech, his facts were sound. Not
+in vain had he been Scott Brenton's senior warden, all these months;
+not in vain Kathryn's medical adviser and unwilling confidant, during
+the recent weeks of her approach to motherhood. He had learned to know
+the fineness of the man, the reverent housing he gave to his ideals,
+the care he lavished on their betterment; and just so surely he also
+knew the sordid selfishness of the woman, her lack of any ideals beyond
+the petty ones concerning food and raiment and mere personal
+advancement, her ruthless disregard of all that related to her
+husband's individual or professional welfare. Scott Brenton spoke even
+of his doubts with a reverent reticence. Kathryn Brenton vaunted her
+supposed beliefs in phrases which, even to the bluff old doctor's ears,
+amounted to the extreme of blasphemy. The rector, even in the richness
+of his humour, treated as somehow fine and sacred matters of every-day
+routine. The rector's lady took the very materials that went into her
+husband's Sunday sermons, and used them as themes for joking of a
+species which passed the limits of the doctor's comprehension. To
+Scott, the very religion that he sought to question, was a pure white
+lily reverently to be placed beneath his microscope. To Kathryn, it was
+a red, red rose to be worn flauntingly upon the apex of her Sunday hat.
+On week days, she was developing a cheap irreverence which never could
+be in danger of turning into anything more vital. It needs some brains
+and no small amount of reverence in any man, before he can become an
+honest agnostic; in both brains and reverence, Kathryn was supremely
+lacking.
+
+How far this lack of reverence resulted from her husband's vacillating
+viewpoint, the doctor could not fathom. More than a little, he
+surmised. Had Brenton never wavered in his theology, Kathryn would have
+clung like a limpet to the bed-rock of her congenital Baptist faith.
+And yet, the doctor could not hold Brenton altogether responsible for
+Kathryn's development. The germs of mental cheapness were in Kathryn's
+nature, as were the germs of more or less illogical doubtings just as
+surely inherent in Scott Brenton's brain. He had increased the
+tendency, not created it.
+
+Neither could the doctor quite make up his mind whether the two of them
+were conscious of the growing gulf between them. To begin with, he
+could not decide whether, on their wedding day, there ever had been any
+real spiritual tangency between them. Reed said not; but Reed had been
+young, at the time of his earlier acquaintance with them, and so
+incapable of forming any stable judgment. Knowing Brenton, it seemed
+incredible to the doctor that he could have been so supinely idiotic as
+to have allowed himself, against his will, to be gobbled up by
+Kathryn--for it was thus that Doctor Eustace Keltridge diagnosed their
+entrance into matrimony. However, the doctor lacked some knowledge of
+the determining factors in the case. He had no notion how Kathryn had
+spread her net before the idealistic young student who was too intent
+upon his personal problems, as concerned his choice of a profession and
+his duty to his mother, to heed the matrimonial pitfalls laid at his
+unwary feet.
+
+However, that there was a gulf, and that an ever-widening one, between
+them was a fact to which the keen-sighted doctor could not blind
+himself. He was seeing much of the Brentons, during these winter weeks.
+Kathryn telephoned to him, almost daily, to consult him about her many
+ills, real or imaginary, about every ill, in short, to which feminine
+flesh was heir, from nervous palpitations of the heart down, or up, to
+housemaid's knee. The doctor longed to give her a downright piece of
+his mind. Instead, he gave her unmedicated sugar pills and as courteous
+attention as he could pull together. His old-time instinctive dislike
+of Kathryn was gathering point and focus, in these days, by reason of
+her increasing references to Claims, and the All-Mind, and to the fact
+that the pain in a neglected tooth was only a manifestation of cowardly
+unbelief. The doctor scented mischief in the glib phrases. He held his
+peace heroically, though, albeit now and then he longed to shake his
+babbling patient as the terrier shakes the rat.
+
+Brenton also he saw constantly. Indeed, he made a point of it, urging
+the young rector to drop into the laboratory in his few off-hours, or
+waylaying him in the midst of a round of pastoral calls and dragging
+him out for a tramp across the ice-white fields. The river, after a
+time or two, he avoided. He did not like the metaphors which the sight
+of it called into Brenton's conversation. Indeed, it was far better for
+any man to go scrabbling up an icy slope, breathless and upon all
+fours, than to stand in a bleak up-valley wind and meditate upon the
+sliding ice cakes in an iron-gray stream. Health and a feeling for the
+picturesque by no means always walk hand in hand; and it was health the
+doctor sought for Brenton, during those winter walks, a mental health
+that could best be evoked from hard bodily exercise, rather than from
+communings with what Kathryn glibly termed the Great All-Mind.
+
+Between the doctor and the increasing demands of parish work, Scott
+Brenton had very little time to spend at home. He would have mourned
+for this the more acutely, had Kathryn given any evidence of mourning
+on her side. Kathryn, however, was quite too busy sewing on
+preposterously small and preposterously frilly garments, quite too busy
+receiving pre-congratulatory calls from the women of the parish, to
+have any leisure left to bestow upon her husband. They met at meals;
+now and then they had an evening hour together, an hour when the chain
+of talk sagged heavily, broke, and fell into a sea of silence. Then
+either Kathryn wiped her eyes with ostentatious secrecy, arose and went
+away to bed; or else Brenton, after a furtive glance or two in the
+direction of her head, bent down above her sewing, stole out of the
+room as noiselessly as he was able and betook himself to the study
+where, often and often, the light burned almost till dawn.
+
+At the table, it was rather better. They could offer each other things
+to eat, and talk about the vagaries of the present cook who, under the
+best of circumstances, was bound to be the past cook within a week or
+so. Scott could ask Kathryn if she had seen the morning paper; Kathryn
+could ask Scott if he knew old Mrs. Swan was likely to die, before the
+day was at an end.
+
+Of any real talk about their personal relations to each other, of any
+but the most trivial reference to the great responsibility which now
+loomed close ahead of them: of this, there was nothing, nothing at all.
+Brenton would have loved to talk about it, to discuss it with his wife
+in perfect frankness, to show out to her in some small measure the
+overwhelming happiness that the outlook brought him, the wonderful and
+awful increase of personal responsibility. It would have given him
+untold pleasure to have gathered his wife into his arms, tight, tight,
+and held her there while, cheek pressed to cheek, they talked about the
+little stranger coming to their home, about the way they best could
+welcome him, and make him happy, and bring out all the best in him
+until his tiny person should become a hallowing influence within the
+home, a strengthening bond between them, man and wife.
+
+Just once he had tried it, never afterwards. Kathryn had laughed
+self-consciously, had bade him _Sh-h-h-h_! Then she had given him
+a pecking sort of kiss, and had wriggled out of his arms. While she had
+rearranged her dismantled pompadour, suspiciously awry since her
+husband's unwonted caress, she had explained quite carelessly that he
+need not worry. Doctor Keltridge was looking out for her, and people
+said he was wonderful in cases of that kind, even if he was a gruff old
+thing. The nurse was all engaged. She was very old, too; but people
+said that she was the best in town. But, of course, a woman in her
+position would have everything possible done. Really, he need not worry
+in the least.
+
+Brenton took the lesson to his heart; but he took it hard. It seemed to
+him a pity that all share in the great anticipation, full as it was of
+mingled fear and rapture and vast, vast responsibility, should be
+denied him. At the first, even knowing Kathryn as he did, he had looked
+for something else, had hoped that their loosening ties would tighten
+under the stress of the coming crisis. For Scott, beneath his proud
+reticence, his seeming blindness to the situation, was painfully aware
+of the gradual severance of interests between himself and Kathryn. This
+final lesson, though, rendered it unmistakable. Under its blow, his
+lined, lean cheeks whitened, his shoulders stooped a little more than
+usual when, after gently letting his wife go from his impetuous
+embrace, he turned away and sought his study. There, alone among the
+working tools of his profession, Scott Brenton first faced the
+realization that the extremest sort of separation is the one that goes
+on within the same four walls.
+
+Drearily Brenton sat himself down in his cane-bottomed desk chair, shut
+his hands upon the edges of his blotting pad and stared the situation
+in the face. Life, to phrase it most unclerically, was distinctly a
+mess. It was going bad, going all the worse, apparently, because of the
+good intentions with which he himself had faced it. He really had meant
+well. He had chosen the profession on which his mother's hopes of
+happiness had been set. He had chosen the wife that she had put in his
+way; had been loyal to that wife in thought, and word, and deed. In
+short, he had done his crude, but level, best to keep at least two of
+the ten commandments, to say nothing of his less conscious struggles
+with the others. And what had happened? He and his profession were
+becoming incompatible. He and his wife were also becoming incompatible.
+The laws of science demanded that he seek the common factor, as source
+of the whole trouble. Therefore, he himself must be the sole cause of
+the wretched bungle Fate was making of his well-intentioned life. Was
+he so malevolent, or just futile? And which was the worse of the two
+alternatives?
+
+Anyway, the fact was that he felt himself an outcast, a negligible bit
+of driftwood upon the tide of opportunity. His profession had found him
+a useless unbeliever. In the end, it would cast him out completely, a
+tattered remnant of a soul, riddled with doubts. His wife would be
+quite too well-mannered to do anything so radical as to cast him out;
+but she was finding him devoid of interest for her, was holding herself
+aloof from him, shutting him away from any real spiritual intercourse
+with her, and reducing him to the bread-and-butter level of a
+table-mate and nothing more. In the end, even, it might-- Then Brenton
+shook his head, as he faced the fact that, in the end, it could not
+possibly be much worse than it was getting to be now. Of course, there
+was publicity to be avoided; but, on the other hand, publicity would
+bring a freedom from the strain of smiling jauntily at life, as though
+nothing really were amiss.
+
+For Brenton realized with a disconcerting clearness that something was
+amiss, much, much amiss; realized, moreover, that he had known it
+vaguely all along. The trouble, albeit still nameless, had been there
+all the time, from the first day that he, smarting from the impact of
+the maternal slipper, had smarted yet more keenly beneath the lash of
+Catie's young disdain. From that time onward, whether she was Catie,
+Catia, or Kathryn, her attitude had been the same, always disdainful,
+always a little uncomprehending of his point of view. She had used
+himself and his profession as a sort of social ladder whereby to
+clamber upward. Always she had disdained the material of which the
+ladder was constructed. Now that she was successfully landed upon the
+desired level and needed its support no longer, would she kick it aside
+entirely, with one flick of her slippered foot? As for their marriage:
+what had it really been? A delicately hand-wrought bond? A machine-made
+manacle? Indeed, the latter, and unbreakable.
+
+Brenton pulled himself up short, horrified at the abyss upon whose
+verge he found himself. He, the priest, vowed, despite his honest
+doubts, to the preaching of God's holy word and commandment, to be
+applying questions such as that to the marriage ties between himself
+and Catie! For, quite unconsciously, the swift revulsion flung him back
+upon the use of the old, almost forgotten name.
+
+No marriage, honestly entered into, honestly lived out, could be a
+machine-wrought manacle. If it seemed one, then the greater shame to
+those who wore it, the greater shame to him, the husband, that his more
+crass nature could throw doubt upon the fineness of the texture of the
+bond. Besides, Kathryn was his wife, his lawful, loyal, albeit
+sometimes uncomprehending, wife. That fact alone was quite sufficient.
+Beyond it, there was no need to probe. Kathryn and he were one; the
+sacred seal of joint parentage was soon to be placed upon their union,
+rendering it more permanent, more holy. If they had their trivial
+disagreements, what then? It was the place of him, the stronger, the
+steadier, to end them for all time. Even while they lasted, he was a
+priest and bound to patient service, not a fiction-monger, like little
+Prather, nosing about in every situation that arose, with the faint
+hope of picking up an occasional crumb of melodramatic copy. He was a
+priest, a man not so much of words as of holy life. And the way to
+priestly holiness did not lie along the hummocks of domestic squabbles.
+
+Brenton lifted his head, shut his teeth a little sidewise, straightened
+his shoulders, and went in search of Kathryn.
+
+But Kathryn, going off to bed, had locked her door behind her. However,
+had the priestly eye been properly applied to the keyhole, it would
+have made out the reassuring fact that Kathryn, sleeping, showed the
+unruffled countenance of a contented babe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN
+
+
+In the fulness of time, the Brenton baby came, a sturdy little
+youngster who, from the start, kicked lustily and lifted up his voice
+out of a pair of brazen lungs that made the domestic welkin ring.
+Kathryn, somewhat weak and very languid, opened her eyes listlessly,
+when the nurse approached the bed, the new-born heir, swaddled and
+shrieking, in her capable arms.
+
+"Here's the baby, Mrs. Brenton!" she announced, and there was as much
+triumph in her tone as if it were the first child of her forty years'
+experience in nursing, not the last.
+
+"Thank you, nurse. I'm sure she's very nice. And will you please tell
+Mr. Brenton," for Scott still was rigidly barred out from the room;
+"that I think we'll name her Katharine--"
+
+"But, ma'am--"
+
+Imperious in spite of her weakness, Kathryn ignored the attempted
+interruption.
+
+"--Katharine, for me and for my grandmother."
+
+"But, Mrs. Brenton, it's a boy."
+
+Kathryn gave a start of indignation.
+
+"Nurse, how stupid! Of course, it is a little girl."
+
+But the nurse responded stolidly,--
+
+"It aint, though; it's a boy."
+
+Kathryn's eyes drooped wearily.
+
+"Well, never mind about that now. There must be some mistake, though,
+for my heart was set on having a little girl. Anyway, you can tell Mr.
+Brenton it's all right. And now, nurse, I think I'll try to take a
+nap."
+
+"And shall I leave the baby, ma'am?"
+
+Kathryn, already settling her cheek upon her hand, stirred wearily.
+
+"Certainly not, nurse, if he's going to cry like that," she said, with
+querulous decision.
+
+That was late at night. Next morning, she aroused herself to some
+slight show of interest as concerned the child.
+
+"It's such a disappointment to have him a boy," she still lamented.
+"Boys' clothes are so very ugly. However," lifting herself up upon her
+elbow, she stared down at the puckered face in the nest of soft white
+flannel; then she fell back again with a little shiver of disgust; "for
+the matter of that, nurse, he's very ugly, too."
+
+This time, the nurse felt herself justified in indignant remonstrance.
+Indeed, in all her forty years of nursing, she never had been in
+contact with a mother who was so unappreciative.
+
+"Ugly, Mrs. Brenton!" Her voice gathered force and fervour, as she went
+on. "How can you say so? He's a puffic' fibbous."
+
+This time, however, the nurse's zeal outran discretion. "Fibbous" or
+no, the baby certainly was red to a fault, his infant brow was crowned
+with a rampant thatch of jet black hair, and no nonagenarian ever was
+one half so wrinkled as this small stranger in the halls of time. Even
+Scott Brenton, his heart thrilling and throbbing with the fearful new
+joys of his paternity, experienced an unmistakable chill, when first he
+gazed upon the countenance of his new-born son. Of course, he must be
+beautiful. Every young baby is that, ex officio. Nevertheless, Scott
+Brenton, looking at him, was fully conscious that he would become yet
+more beautiful, once he had been bleached a little, to say nothing of
+having had some of the puckers straightened out. And, besides, he was
+so curiously invertebrate, had such a tendency to coil himself to the
+likeness of a shrimp. In time, beyond a doubt, he would come out all
+right. For the present moment, though, he was a trifle problematic in
+his attractions.
+
+"What shall we call him, Catie?" Scott asked her gently, the second
+night after the boy was born.
+
+Her frown was petulant.
+
+"Catie!" she echoed. "Why can't you call me Katharine, Scott? It is so
+much more dignified than that old baby name. I'd meant to call our baby
+by it, really call her by it, not by some uncouth nickname. Yes. I know
+I was baptised Catie; but so you were baptised Walter. We both of us,
+you see, have something to forget. Any way, I am determined to save the
+baby so much, so I want to take plenty of time to choose a good name
+for him. There's no hurry, for the present." She was silent, for a
+moment. Then she added, with rare tact, "I do so hope that, in course
+of time, he will improve a little in his looks. Nurse says that now he
+is just the image of you. No, nurse. I don't believe I want him in
+here. Really, he does make the bed very warm."
+
+Indeed, from the first hour of his advent, that was her attitude
+towards the baby boy. As a piece of her own property, she tolerated
+him; she assumed it, as a matter of course, that in herself alone
+should be vested all rights of dictatorship over him. But when, in any
+way, he interfered with her personal comfort, she handed him over to
+the safe keeping of his nurse. And the nurse received him with a
+gratitude unblunted by her forty years' experience of similar babies.
+She coddled him, and dandled him, and rubbed his little backbone, and
+whispered into his disregarding ears over and over again that he was a
+itty-bitty puffic' fibbous, whatever that mamma of his might think
+about it. He was a puffic' fibbous; and she knew.
+
+Despite what seemed to Brenton the exceeding ugliness of his small son,
+he took an infinite delight in his society. From the first day on, he
+persecuted the nurse with inquiries as to the child's condition,
+persecuted her, too, with insistent offers of help in administering to
+the baby needs. By the half-hour at a time, the rector of Saint
+Peter's, leaving his parish in the hands of the new curate whose advent
+had been simultaneous with that of the baby boy, hung above the frilly
+basket in which his small son either lay in a placid doze, or else
+contorted himself and shrieked discordantly.
+
+It was a great day for Brenton, a red-letter day, when first the child
+was laid across his blanket-covered knees, while the nurse stood by,
+uttering many cautions and forcibly adjusting the angles of the
+clerical elbows, the better to support their tiny burden. Then she
+backed off, and stood gazing down upon the two of them adoringly.
+
+"A puffic' fibbous!" she ejaculated. "And, what's more, the puffic'
+image of his popper!"
+
+But, by this time, Scott Brenton felt no chill at the suggestion of the
+likeness of this pink and curly little being to himself. The baby was
+four days old; already he seemed to Brenton to have curled his rosy
+little self into his father's inmost heart. Already, too, the father
+was learning the mingled joy and pain of looking towards the future:
+the joy of anticipating all that his boy might become, the pain of
+knowing how fast and how irrevocably the baby days were passing on. He
+longed to see his child a full-grown man, a happier, better man than he
+himself had ever been. He also longed to hold fast to each one of the
+hours of babyhood, to keep them from slipping out from actual existence
+into the vague horizon of more or less distant memory.
+
+And then, one day, a new thought struck him. What if, in time, the
+child slipped, too? That night, he walked the study floor till dawn.
+Next day, he went to see Professor Opdyke in his private laboratory.
+All this time, he had been lavishing his entire stock of pity upon
+Reed. He knew better now, saw things by far more clearly. The almost
+imperceptible weight across his blanket-covered knees had been enough
+to open a new vein of understanding, a dawning realization of just what
+it was that the past year had brought to Professor Opdyke, as much,
+indeed, as to Reed, his son. He went to see Professor Opdyke and, after
+blundering through the inevitable vague preliminaries, he came directly
+to the point and, out of his six days' experience of fatherhood, he
+gave to the professor a sympathetic comfort hitherto denied him.
+
+It was the first of many similar lessons Brenton received from the warm
+contact of the shrimp-like bundle on his knees, the first and therefore
+memorable. It was also memorable for quite another reason: the renewal
+of his intimacy with the professor and the private laboratory.
+
+Of late, this intimacy had been dropping out of sight a little.
+Whatever time that Brenton took for visiting the Opdykes, quite as a
+matter of course he had been lavishing on Reed. It never had occurred
+to him till now that, quite as much as Reed, Reed's father might be
+needing the tonic of outside visitations, the stimulus of contacts
+alien to his daily cares, the sympathetic comradeship of an individual
+able to arouse him from the alternate contemplation of his official
+duties at the college and of the sombre cloud hanging above his home.
+All at once, it came to Brenton that the professor himself might also
+be a candidate for sympathy, a grateful recipient of diverting
+conversations which did not focus themselves entirely upon Reed. The
+first experimental visit to the private laboratory proved to be such an
+entire success that others followed it until, by degrees, Brenton slid
+back into his old fashion of spending many of his odd hours among the
+balances and test-tubes, among the old, familiar sights, the smells so
+wholly unforgettable.
+
+At any other time, under any other circumstances, the spell of the
+place would not have been one half so potent. Now, in the intimacy
+evoked by hour-long discussions of their sons' possible futures, the
+professor was coming to take a dominant place in Brenton's life. After
+preaching what he felt to be unprovable futilities, it was no small
+satisfaction to Brenton to come into contact with a man whose sane and
+practical working creed was supported by a perfect trestlework of
+interlocking equations based, in their turn, on fundamental and
+well-proved natural laws. After attributing the erratic courses of
+humanity to the caprices of an all-wise, but slightly captious,
+Creator, it was very good to sit and discuss them with a comrade who
+insisted upon reducing them all to rule and order, who declared, and
+also proved past all gainsaying, that nothing ever really happened,
+that the very thing which man calls chance is only another name for his
+blindness to some link connecting the event and cause. Even the
+shrimp-like propensities of his small son. Even the flat, flat figure
+stretched out on the couch, up-stairs at home. The Creator did not do
+just the thing itself, in sheer and potent wantonness. He merely laid
+down the laws. One followed them implicitly; or else, like every
+law-breaker, got punished.
+
+And the look of the place; the old, old fascinating reek of it; the
+click of glass on glass; the whirring flare of freshly-lighted Bunsen
+burners! In vain Brenton tried his best to deaden his senses to the
+lure of it; but it was of no use. The charm was in his blood; it would
+not down. The smell of hydrogen sulphide was dearer to him than any
+incense; his fingers shut upon the test-tubes with a greedier clutch
+than any they had ever given to The Book of Common Prayer. And yet, by
+some curious mental process, that book of prayer, its age-old
+liturgies, never rang more sonorous in his mind than when they echoed
+in his ears above the whirring of the Bunsen burners. Science was his
+passion, not theology; but science aroused in him a spirit of
+reverential worship for his Creator as mere theology had never done. He
+caught himself, one day, even, with his eyes glued fast to the
+professor's deft manipulations, while he himself was saying, half
+aloud,--
+
+"The Lord is in His holy temple." And then, next in line, "When man
+doeth that which is lawful, he shall save his soul alive."
+
+Law everywhere! And then, quite as a corollary, life! But how dared he,
+how dared any man, preach from a pulpit, when it was given to him to
+toil in a laboratory, instead? Which was the greater reverence: to
+exploit one's own belief; or, open-minded, to be searching for a
+clearer outlook upon truth? And so, bit by bit, the lure of the
+laboratory beckoned to Scott Brenton, just as, bit by bit, his wife and
+his profession lost their hold upon him; lost it, to his regret, lost
+it by their own failure to supply his highest needs. As to the
+laboratory itself and all it offered, it was no mean achievement for it
+to make good to Brenton all the other lacks, whether in his
+professional career, or in his wife herself. Indeed, he turned to
+science, his first great love, as some other men might have turned to
+the wooing society of a stage soubrette. As the weeks went on, and the
+tentacles of his priesthood, coming into contact with his doubts and
+failing to penetrate them, by slow degrees relaxed their grip on him,
+by those same slow degrees, he felt his manhood yielding to the
+insistent demands of nature's law upon her votaries. As yet, however,
+he had no realization that now the ultimate result was but a matter of
+time. Professor Opdyke realized it, though, quite clearly; and he laid
+his plans accordingly.
+
+Meanwhile, between the insistent interests that centred in his son, and
+the persistent efforts of the professor to make good all other lacks,
+Scott Brenton was finding life a saner and a happier thing than he had
+ever dreamed. Even his doubtings almost ceased to sting him, nowadays.
+A Creator whose achievements ran throughout the gamut from the actions
+of a bit of sodium flung into a dish of water, up to the intricate
+brain processes of a baby just beginning, as the phrase is, to take
+notice: surely a Creator capable of that was not likely to bungle His
+plans and be driven to reconstruct them now and then, either by
+miraculous intervention, or by thrusting a brake between the cogs of
+the revolving wheels of everlasting law. If the baby boy absorbed the
+contents of his bottle too fast for his good, he had a wholly
+consequent stomach ache. If Reed Opdyke tried conclusions with black
+powder and with lumps of loosened rock, he was laid on his back, with
+uncompromising promptness. In neither case was there a question of
+bringing distress upon the children of men, willingly or unwillingly.
+They brought it on themselves; theirs was the fault. As well blame a
+railway engine for running over the well-meaning individual who lies
+down on the track to rest and meditate on higher things, as blame the
+natural law with which men tamper. The All-Wise shows His goodness to
+His creatures in that He has laid down law of any sort, not left the
+universe to chance and wilful freakishness. As for gospel, the
+essential thing to preach was the duty of living according to the law.
+After all, it was living, not belief, that counted in the end of
+everything.
+
+And, all that spring and early summer, it was living that Scott Brenton
+preached. He left to his new curate all the insisting upon proper
+points of doctrine. He himself took as his sole concern the thing he
+felt most vital, life itself. And, as the weeks went on, perchance in
+consonance with his new doctrine concerning man's grip on life eternal,
+perchance by reason of his greater enjoyment of life temporal, Brenton
+grew stronger, infinitely more alert, infinitely more virile in his
+magnetism. The old, limp husk, partly of heredity, in part of starved
+existence, was falling off from him. More and more plainly, as it fell,
+there stood revealed to all who had the eyes to see, the nervous figure
+of the man within.
+
+Even Katharine felt the change instinctively, although, nowadays, she
+was too absorbed in realizing her identity with the All-Mind, with
+proving that suffering was nothing in the world but absent-minded sin,
+to pay any great attention to so concrete a matter as her husband's
+improved appetite and better sleep. Katharine, by now, had come to the
+point where she was beginning to dispense with the services of Doctor
+Keltridge in any minor crisis; and, instead, to sit and meditate upon
+the crisis, with a black-bound, fine-print, much-begilded volume open
+on her knee. As always, Katharine reckoned shrewdly. If an ordinary
+five-dollar copy of her new spiritual check-book upon the bank of
+health were potent to subdue any sort of pains from indigestion to a
+raging tooth, then a ten-dollar binding super-added ought, of a surety,
+to be able to cope with tuberculosis or the hookworm. Therefore she had
+chosen to fortify herself once and for all.
+
+Meanwhile, the little table beside her bed-head was fast heaping itself
+with small books of devotion, books from which the old-time cross was
+conspicuously absent. At present, it was taxing all her ingenuity, all
+the fervour of her new belief, to make its tenets tally with her young
+son's attitude concerning colic, doubtless because, at some point or
+other, he had escaped from perfect contact with the All-Mind, the
+Healer. Some noxious claim or other still held good over him, despite
+her efforts to eradicate its malignant influence. It was disappointing.
+Still, as yet she was merely a novice in the great order of the new
+religion; and she only wondered at the swift hold her untrained mind
+had gained upon the pliant body of her husband.
+
+Katharine smiled contentedly above her open book. Strange that she ever
+could have cherished the false notion that she and Scott were alien in
+their natures! Rather not! They both were ultra-scientific,
+fundamentally alike. As yet, of course, Scott did not spell his science
+with an X; but that was bound to come. How could it be otherwise,
+indeed, when his mere carnal appetite for bacon and dry toast had
+multiplied itself by ten, as result of her devotion to the book now
+lying open on her knee? It would be so very good, when she had brought
+her own husband to her way of thinking. For Scott was still her
+husband, still in a sense her property; therefore he still was dear to
+her, after her selfish fashion. His acceptance of her standards would
+be infinitely good; infinitely better would be the knowledge that she
+herself had converted him to their acceptation. And after Scott?
+
+Katharine's prominent and shallow eyes grew hazy with the greatness of
+her thoughts, the while she meditated upon the wider field of labour
+offered her in the person of Reed Opdyke. Glorious indeed would be the
+conversion and the consequent cure of a desperate case like that! It
+would be a brilliant vindication of her science from the slanders of
+that decreasing number who persisted in ignoring the prefatory X.
+
+Katharine's eyes grew yet more dreamy, above the open pages of her
+book. If courage were only hers, and patience, it all would come to her
+in the fulness of time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY
+
+
+The new curate, meanwhile, was having, in vulgar parlance, the time of
+his whole life. He was young, ritualistic, and he had a tendency
+towards being lungish. Therefore his devoutness was excessive. His
+rector, moreover, had a trick of preaching upon the practical issues of
+the day, while he left to his assistant the driving home the points of
+doctrine. And the assistant did drive them home most lustily and with
+resounding whacks, until the sedate walls of old Saint Peter's echoed
+with the blows, and the congregations gathered in old Saint Peter's
+danced with the pain of the prickings. The mere presence of a pin is
+not sufficient to produce any callousness of mind or body. Saint
+Peter's had never doubted the force or the efficiency of its doctrines;
+but it was at least a generation since it had been so rowelled with
+their points.
+
+One such rowelling had just been taking place when, on the Sunday
+morning following the Easter holidays, Dolph Dennison dropped in to see
+Reed Opdyke. As he more than half expected, he found Olive Keltridge
+there ahead of him, and it was upon Olive Keltridge that, after a most
+unceremonious greeting to his host, Dolph turned the fire of his
+interrogation.
+
+"Who is the expensive-looking gentleman in the bunny hood, Olive, the
+one that sat back in the corner and kept tabs on Brenton's reading of
+the lessons?"
+
+Olive laughed at the undeniable accuracy of the description.
+
+"That's the new curate, Dolph. You must have seen him before."
+
+"Not," Dolph responded briefly. "It wouldn't be possible to forget him.
+What's he for? Ornament? I must say, Saint Peter's is getting frilly in
+its hoary age, and frills like that come dear."
+
+"Not so dear as he looks," Olive reassured him. "In reality, he comes
+cheap. He is just up from nervous prostration and ordered to a more
+relaxing climate, so we got him at a bargain."
+
+"Damaged goods. I see. Seen him, Opdyke? Hood and all--it's of white
+bunny--he looks like the tag-end of an importer's mark-down sale, and
+his idioms match the rest of him. Where'd they get him, Olive? Not your
+father?"
+
+"My father didn't get him, if that is what you mean, Dolph. Mr.
+Prather, I believe it was, who recommended him."
+
+"Prather for all the world! Just like the man; he is always on the
+still hunt for something a little bit exotic. Next thing we know, we'll
+be having the reverend gentleman served up to us in a novel. But why
+the bunny? It is no end unmerciful, a day like this, as hot as ermine,
+and without any of the glory."
+
+"What does a curate do?" Reed queried. "Besides putting on the hood, I
+mean, and lugging round the cakes for tea, in English novels."
+
+"This one leads all the responses, and sometimes he leads them a little
+bit ahead of time," Dolph enlightened him. "Besides that, he keeps his
+lean forefinger on the word that Brenton happens to be reading, ready
+to help him out on the pronunciation, if it is necessary. Between
+whiles, he counts up the congregation and divides it by ten, to make
+sure that he gets the right amount of offertory. Really, he works
+hard."
+
+"You might also mention that he preaches," Olive added.
+
+Dolph chuckled.
+
+"I wasn't sure that's what you'd call it. It seemed to me a long way
+more like administering a verbal spanking. Is that his chronic method,
+Olive?"
+
+But Reed cut in.
+
+"I can testify on that score. Sometimes he is only tenderly regretful,
+and that is any amount worse. He came prowling in, one day; I suppose
+he thought it ought to be his proper function, and the maid took fright
+at his canonicals and let him up. Usually she heads off strangers; but
+this fellow was too much for her."
+
+"And you let him stay?" Dolph's voice was incredulous.
+
+"What could I do? I couldn't very well arise and escort him to the
+door; neither could I fling a boot at him, when he came in. No; I told
+him I was very well, I thanked him--in reality, it was one of my
+grilling days--and then, as soon as I heard his accent, I had the
+brilliant inspiration of shouting to the maid to bring some tea. The
+creature poured it for himself, with any amount of cream. Then he sat
+down, with his toes turned in, and took his cup on his right knee and
+prepared to make merry."
+
+"And you joined in?"
+
+"_Sotto voce_, as it were." Reed laughed at the memory. "You see, I had
+to be properly lugubrious, to tally up to his impressions of what I
+ought to be. He had been here just a week, then, and he had me down
+pat. Somebody must have coached him grandly, and he's the sort who
+revels in woe and in consequent and ghostly consolation."
+
+Olive's eyes were fixed upon the view outside the window.
+
+"Poor old Reed! And then?"
+
+"Then?" Opdyke shot her a glance of merry mockery. "That night, after
+he had trundled me off to bed, Ramsdell stood and gazed down at me with
+a new respect. 'I must say, Mr. Hopdyke,' he told me; 'you 'ave been in
+grand form, hall this evening. I never 'eard you do any finer swearing
+in hall the time I've been with you.'"
+
+"And that comes of a moral influence!" Dolph laughed. "If that's the
+way he is going to affect sinners, Brenton will have his hands full,
+following up his curate's trail."
+
+"Brenton is of different stuff," Reed made crispy comment.
+
+"Have you noticed the change in Mr. Brenton since the baby came, Reed?"
+Olive inquired abruptly.
+
+"I've hardly seen him. From all accounts, he is devoting most of his
+spare time to my father. What is the baby like, Olive?"
+
+"Ugly as sin; but Mr. Brenton believes him an Adonis."
+
+"What about the mother?"
+
+"Eddyizing fast."
+
+"What?" The word burst simultaneously from both the men.
+
+"Didn't you know? Yes, it is a malignant case. I only hope it won't go
+round the family."
+
+"Babies are holy, and therefore immune; Brenton has too much sense. But
+is it a fact, Olive?" Opdyke questioned.
+
+"It evidently is a fact that you are a poor, shut-in invalid, and not
+brought up to date in local gossip," Olive told him tranquilly. "I
+can't see how you have missed hearing of it, Reed, even if it did
+escape my mind. Yes, it seems to be a fact that everybody is
+questioning and nobody is disputing. Of course, though, nobody is in a
+position to testify absolutely."
+
+"Your father?"
+
+"She has dismissed him. At least," and Olive corrected herself with
+ostentatious care; "she says that her health no longer needs him,
+although she always shall value him greatly as a well-tried friend."
+
+Opdyke pondered. Then he said,--
+
+"The d--"
+
+"Arling!" Dolph made hasty substitution. "But I fancy he is well-tried,
+all right, if he has had to dance professional attendance on her.
+Where'd she catch it, Olive?"
+
+"Nobody knows. My father says it is like any other germ, floats around
+in the air and is harmless, until it lights on some degenerate tissue.
+But then, he never did like Mrs. Brenton."
+
+"The question is," Dolph said, with sudden gravity; "will Brenton get
+it? I'd rather he'd be afflicted with curacy than with this other
+thing."
+
+"Curacy?" Olive questioned. "What's that?"
+
+"Acting like this curate chap, and giving his congregation red-hot pap
+for their Sabbatic food. At least, that's curable; the other isn't."
+
+But Reed shook his head. Despite his unvarying point of view, he knew
+Scott Brenton better.
+
+"You don't need to worry about Brenton," he assured them. "He has some
+common sense and a little logic; both things render him immune."
+
+Dolph settled back in his chair and crossed his legs.
+
+"Yes, Olive, I intend to outstay you," he said, in answer to her
+glance. "You were here first; it's your turn to go now. But about this
+latest freak of Mrs. Brenton: where do you suppose she picked it up?"
+
+"Evolved it from within."
+
+"Doubted. I've talked to her, Opdyke; she's not the kind to evolve
+anything, certainly not a full-fledged case of--"
+
+Olive interrupted.
+
+"There is some good in it, though," she persisted.
+
+"Where?" Opdyke asked her.
+
+"The complexion; it's better than any amount of massage. One never
+wrinkles, when one is convinced that nothing can go wrong."
+
+"What about measles?" Dolph demanded pertly.
+
+But Reed objected to the trivial interlude.
+
+"I wish I knew how Brenton really would be taking it," he said, rather
+more insistently than it was his wont to speak. "The poor beggar has
+had bad times lately with his Ego; always has had, in fact. He has an
+enormous conscience, linked with an insatiate desire to put the whole
+universe under a blowpipe, and then weigh up the residue. That's
+infernally bad for a preacher, especially when he has a wife who is
+strong neither in her cooking nor in her sense of humour. Yes, I know
+something about Mrs. Brenton, even if I haven't seen her lately.
+Besides, I shall see her, some day. She is still clamouring at my
+portal; it's only a matter of time now, before she downs the outer
+guards and gets in."
+
+"Reed, you won't allow it!" Olive said quickly, for she thought she was
+aware what such a call portended.
+
+Opdyke's smile was grim.
+
+"The inner fortress is invincible, Olive, so don't worry. I sha'n't
+encourage the maid to let her in. Still, if she breaks through, at
+least it will keep her out of mischief in other quarters, and I am a
+long way more invulnerable than Brenton."
+
+"They say," Dolph remarked at the opposite wall; "that it is a
+perfectly grand thing for the temper."
+
+Olive answered without a trace of malice, so intent was she upon the
+question at issue.
+
+"Really, Dolph, I think she isn't cantankerous. Quite selfish people
+never are; they just grab everything in sight, with a total serenity
+and regardless of any consequences. That is the reason Mrs. Brenton is
+such a good subject for her new religion."
+
+Reed roused himself from a brown study.
+
+"If you meet Brenton anywhere, Olive, don't you want to ask him to come
+in to see me soon? I've some things I want to say to him; not about
+this, of course. Yes, I could telephone, Dennison; but I hate to
+interrupt him, when he is in his study at the church; and, at the
+house, there's always the danger of calling out Mrs. Brenton. Going? I
+wish you wouldn't. Still," and the brown eyes sought the window; "I
+can't blame you, such a day."
+
+"Oh, Reed, don't!" Olive said hastily, as she bent to take his hand.
+"It makes us seem so selfish. When will the time ever come that you can
+go, too?"
+
+Reed shut his lips. Although, of late, both he and Olive had dropped
+their reticence and faced squarely and without evasion the facts of his
+long imprisonment, even with Dolph, the mention of it hurt him acutely.
+Dolph, that day, was so astonishingly alert, so scrupulously charming
+in his Sunday trim, such a contrast to himself, flattened out under a
+plaid steamer rug whose fringe persisted in getting into his mouth at
+times, and with his wavy hair a little disarranged across his forehead.
+Ramsdell was invaluable; but, after all, he was nurse primarily, not
+valet. But, as for Dolph, he was a thing of beauty and, what was more,
+a thing of life, not a soggy bundle like himself. Indeed, he was a fit
+comrade for Olive.
+
+Despite his blithe farewell, Reed's brown eyes drooped heavily, after
+he had watched the two of them pass out of sight around the corner of
+the doorway. Good comrades? Yes. The thin lips lost their steadiness,
+quivered a little, then opened, to send an answer out to the final hail
+that came back to him from the hall below. A moment afterward, the chin
+quivered, even as the lips had done, and something glittered on the
+long brown lashes.
+
+"Ramsdell?" Reed said, a little later.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"How long have you been working on this thing?"
+
+"Eleven months and a 'alf, sir."
+
+"Have I made any gain at all?"
+
+"Ye--es, sir. Oh, yes."
+
+Reed smiled grimly.
+
+"How much am I going to keep on gaining?"
+
+"Well, sir," Ramsdell's accent was supposed to be encouraging; "you
+see, there's always 'ope, sir."
+
+"I'm glad of so much. Well, never mind about that now. I want to send a
+telegram. Please get the blanks."
+
+With Ramsdell seated by his side, blanks in one hand, fountain pen in
+the other, Opdyke paused to consider.
+
+"Well, there's no use beating about the bush. I may as well go straight
+to the point. Ready, Ramsdell? All right. _To H. P. Whittenden, Seven,
+Blank Street, New York City._ Sure you've got that right? All right.
+Then: _Getting badly bored and losing grip fast. Come pull me out.
+Opdyke._ That's all, Ramsdell. Send it off, to-night."
+
+Next afternoon, Whittenden came, to all seeming the same unspoiled,
+curly-headed youngster who had helped to open Brenton's eyes, so long
+ago, to the real good there was in life, despite the melancholy
+teachings of his early Calvinism. The professor was busy with a class,
+Mrs. Opdyke had a cold; and so it came about that Olive, dropping in,
+that morning, and hearing of the dilemma, offered to drive down to meet
+the guest.
+
+"You always were a comfort, Olive," Reed assured her gratefully.
+"You've a general-utility sort of disposition that seems to balk at
+nothing, and therefore we all impose upon you. Sure you don't mind? You
+can't miss Whittenden. I've told you too many things about him, and he
+looks exactly the sort of man he is."
+
+Olive did not miss him. More than that, she used the fifteen minutes of
+their drive together to impress upon the guest's mind the salient facts
+of Reed's history during the past eleven months, facts largely of the
+spirit, not a mere physical chronology.
+
+"And the worst of it all is," she said, as she drew up at the Opdyke
+gate; "we none of us, however much we care for him, however hard we
+try, can get inside the situation and share it with him. He is bound to
+go through it, all alone. That is the most maddening phase of the whole
+thing."
+
+But Whittenden, looking into her brown eyes, had his doubts of that.
+Before he went to bed, that night, his doubts were even greater.
+
+As a matter of fact, neither Reed Opdyke nor his guest slept very much,
+that night. Indeed, they scarcely went to bed at all. Ramsdell, dozing
+in the next room, fully dressed, to be in call when Opdyke needed to be
+put into bed, had a hazy idea that the evening was eighteen hours long
+and that both the men talked throughout it, without pause. The truth of
+the matter was, however, that the pauses were both long and frequent,
+those quiet times which come across a conversation full of mutual
+understanding. At the start, there had been a good deal to say on both
+sides. It was the first time the two men had met since Opdyke's
+accident; an experience such as that can never fully be explained by
+letters, especially when, on one side, the letters have to be dictated
+to a man like Ramsdell, sounder of heart than of orthography. Reed
+slurred over most of the details of the accident, even now. What he did
+not slur over, what he had summoned his friend to hear, was the record
+of the months that had come after, a record which, for just the once,
+he allowed himself to paint in its true colours, dull, dun gray, and
+deep, deep black.
+
+"That's all, Whittenden," he said abruptly at last. "I suppose I might
+have gone about it a little bit more tersely; but, the fact is, I
+haven't been letting myself rehearse it often. It's bad for the
+audience."
+
+"And almighty good for you," the curly-headed rector said tranquilly.
+"Mind if I smoke, Reed?"
+
+"Of course not. Sorry I can't join you. It's forbidden fruit, like most
+other things, these days." He lay very still, for a while. Then he
+looked up, with the ghost of his accustomed smile. "Well, what do you
+make out of it all, Whittenden? You've heard and seen the worst of me.
+Now what next? Is this losing my grip the final stage of the whole bad
+matter?"
+
+Whittenden flung up one lean hand to grasp the chairback above his
+head. Then he smoked in silence for a time, his clear eyes fixed on
+Opdyke's face. At last, he spoke.
+
+"Reed, it sounds infernally like preaching, and you know I draw the
+line at that, except from the pulpit. However, I don't know why, even
+if one is a preacher, it's not as decent to quote Bible as to quote
+Shakespeare; and there's one sentence that keeps coming into my head,
+while I watch you, about losing your life and finding it again. You may
+think you've lost your grip on yourself; but, from your own showing,
+you've gained a lot of grip on your friends, and I'm not sure that may
+not count fully as much, in the long run. As for the bore of it, I
+can't much wonder. I'd go mad, myself, laid out here like a poker, and
+left, half the day, to ponder on the things I hadn't had time to finish
+doing. But, for the rest of it--Reed, I knew you in what you are
+pleased to call your palmy days. They were palmy, too; it must have
+hurt like thunder to be plucked out of them. And yet," the clear eyes
+swept from the topmost wave of brown hair down across the intent face,
+so curiously alive, down across the inert body, so curiously dead; "and
+yet, I'll be hanged if I don't believe you are more of a man, more of
+an active force, than you were then."
+
+"Impossible." Reed spoke briefly.
+
+"Why?" The answer was as brief.
+
+"I don't see a dozen different people in a month, Whittenden. You've no
+idea how few there are who--"
+
+"Who take the trouble to come up your stairs? Exactly. Of course, there
+are some others who'd be glad to come, and don't dare. There are also
+some others who would be glad to come, and who probably would kill you,
+if they did. Still, granted the solitary dozen: force isn't a thing one
+measures by the acre, Reed. It is deep, not wide. Therefore your dozen
+are enough."
+
+"But why the dozen? They come to play with me. I don't do anything to
+them."
+
+"No?" Whittenden spoke with his eyes on his cigar. "Ask Ramsdell. Ask
+Brenton. Ask--" he turned his eyes on Opdyke; "Miss Keltridge."
+
+With a sudden gesture, Opdyke flung his arm across his brow and eyes.
+
+"Don't!" he said, and his voice sounded stifled.
+
+Deliberately his friend bent forward, took away the shielding arm, and
+looked down into Opdyke's eyes unflinchingly.
+
+"Reed, you must not let yourself get morbid," he said steadily. "God
+knows there's every reason that you should; and yet, once you do, the
+game is up. This is a thing you must face squarely, and remember, while
+you face it, that not one life is concerned, but two." Then he let go
+the arm, which went back to the old position, and, for a time, the room
+was very still.
+
+"Old man," Whittenden said, after a longish interval of smoking and
+watching the shielded face; "I know I'm not much use; but doesn't it
+help a little to know I'm here, and sick with the seeing for myself all
+that this thing means to you? Of course, I had the letters; but they
+didn't go far. One has to come and talk it out; and--Well, I'm here."
+
+Then the arm came down, and the heavy eyes met Whittenden's.
+
+"That's why I sent for you," Reed said. "I wanted you."
+
+Ramsdell, in the next room, had quite a little doze, before once more
+the voices waked him.
+
+"You see," Reed said at last, as if there had been no pause at all; "I
+was a little in the state those fellows were in, up at the mine. I
+needed something equivalent to their extreme unction. The cases are
+analogous; though, after all, I am not sure it would be quite as hard
+to die into the next world as I'm finding it to die out of this."
+
+Whittenden's clear eyes flickered. Then he braced himself and asked the
+direct question to which his friend, for two long hours, had been so
+plainly leading.
+
+"Reed, do you mean this thing is--permanent?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You know it for a fact?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Since when?"
+
+"A month or so."
+
+"They told you?"
+
+"No. They still keep up the fiction that they can't predict anything
+with any surety."
+
+"Then how do you know?"
+
+"How does anybody know it, when more than half of himself is just so
+much dead matter; when the division line between the dead part and the
+alive doesn't move along by so much as one hair's breadth; when the
+dead part is dead past any resurrection? It is my body, Whittenden. I
+know it for a fact."
+
+There was no especial answer to be made. Whittenden had the superlative
+good sense to attempt none. After a silence, Reed spoke again.
+
+"I haven't told anybody of it yet, till now. There was no use, and I
+dreaded the row they'd be sure to make. Besides, I wanted to tell you,
+first of all, because you are the one man in reach who has seen me in
+the thick of things, and I knew there would be any amount of detail you
+would take in, without my having to explain it to you."
+
+The rector nodded. Through his curling smoke-trails, it seemed to him
+he caught a glimpse of the rugged, ragged Colorado mountains, of a
+shabby mining camp centring in a group of shafts, of squads of
+rough-faced miners, and of Reed Opdyke, smiling and alert, striding
+here and there among them, laying down the law superbly, a king among
+his loyal and adoring subjects. And now--Whittenden flung back his
+head, and his clear eyes glowed with his belief. Never more a king than
+now, as he lay there, quiet, but very potent, establishing his throne
+above the level of the powers of darkness who murmured threateningly
+about his feet! And, meanwhile,--
+
+"Queer thing about our bodies," Reed was saying; "queer and almost a
+little cruel. We drive them at top speed and never think a thing about
+them, as long as they go on all right. It's when they snap, that we
+begin to realize all the things they've stood for."
+
+Again there came the silence, while the eyes of the two men rested on
+each other, more eloquent than many words. At last, Reed spoke again.
+
+"It's all hours, Whittenden. I've been a beast to keep you up; still,
+it is a relief to have it out and over. Now go to bed. Before you go,
+though--for now and then we all of us want something we can hang on to,
+and this is one of the times--I don't mean to funk my own share in the
+main issue; but, Whittenden, before you go off to bed, would you mind
+just saying the _Our Father_? It's some time since I've heard it, and,
+in this present muddle of my universe, I've a general notion it might
+be of help."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
+
+
+It was not until well on in the next day that the two men spoke of
+Brenton. Indeed, all their talk, next morning, was plainest platitude.
+Instinctively each of them realized that the other needed a little time
+to rally from the strain of the night before. Accordingly, though eight
+o'clock found them breakfasting together in Opdyke's room, Ramsdell, in
+attendance on his patient's numerous needs of help, acknowledged to
+himself that he never saw a patient and a priest act like such a pair
+of schoolboys squabbling over jam. Afterwards, Ramsdell dismissed and
+sent off on an errand, Whittenden smoked, and Opdyke lay and watched
+him in a contented reverie too deep for words. As he had said to
+Brenton, once on a time, it was a relief to get even a bad matter out
+and over. Later, he was quite well aware, he would take up the subject
+with his friend once more; but the week was nearly all before them.
+They could afford to rest a little, and let the healing silence fall
+between them.
+
+Indeed, in all the morning, they exchanged a scanty dozen sentences. An
+occasional questioning glance, an inarticulate grunt of comprehension:
+after their long night vigil, this was all for which either of them
+felt inclined. In the meantime, Reed's face was losing somewhat of its
+look of strain; Whittenden's clear eyes were growing gentler, yet
+infinitely more full of courage. To both of them, the future was less
+of a blank wall than it had seemed, the night before. Already, they
+both were gathering a little more perspective.
+
+Towards noon, though, Opdyke roused himself and spoke.
+
+"This isn't going to do for you, Whittenden," he said, with decision.
+"If you sit about like this, I'll have you tucked up beside me, within
+the week. You've got to have some exercise. I'll set Ramsdell to
+telephoning on your behalf, if you will call him. Yes, I can telephone;
+but it's not too easy, so I generally pass the job on to him. Who'll
+you have for your escort: Olive Keltridge, or Brenton?"
+
+"Brenton?"
+
+"Scott Brenton. Surely, I wrote you he was here."
+
+Whittenden laughed.
+
+"If you did, it never got put in. Most likely Ramsdell balked at the
+spelling. You mean the Brenton that I married?"
+
+"Yes, worse luck!"
+
+The rector nodded.
+
+"It's come to that; has it? I'm not too much surprised. What is he
+doing here?"
+
+"Preaching, of course."
+
+"No of course about it. He was more a physicist than anything else, it
+seemed to me. I had an idea he'd have gone in for teaching before now."
+
+"Give him time."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I'd rather you saw for yourself. In fact, I think we'll give up any
+idea of Olive, for the afternoon, and telephone to Brenton to come and
+take you for a walk. Telephone him yourself, for that matter."
+
+"He may be busy."
+
+"Not he. He has a curate now to do his routine work, and he frisks
+about, a good deal as he pleases. Poor beggar! He takes his very
+frisking sadly, nowadays. And then, after you've nailed him, would you
+call up Olive, nine-two-three, and tell her I'm to be abandoned, all
+afternoon. She may take the hint."
+
+"Shall you tell her things, Reed?"
+
+"Not yet?" Reed spoke crisply.
+
+"Why not? I fancy she'd be one to understand."
+
+"So she would. She always does, always has done, ever since she was
+born, and we all take it out of her accordingly, a good deal as we take
+it out of you. However, I don't want her to know it, yet awhile. I'd
+prefer to understand the thing a little better, myself, before I pass
+it on. And, of course, you won't speak of it to Brenton?"
+
+And Whittenden shook his head. He shook it with the more surety,
+because of his old-time memories of Brenton, the lank, ill-nourished
+youth with the crude manners and the lambent eyes. One did not tell
+things to a man like that; one merely listened, and then gave advice.
+That was really all. And then, his telephoning finished, Whittenden
+fell to wondering into what sort of a man Scott Brenton, the embryo,
+had turned. The voice was reassuring, also the accent. Both spoke of
+vast improvement in their owner.
+
+Two hours later, Whittenden, balancing himself on the window sill at
+Opdyke's side, glanced down at the walk below him, as he heard a step
+draw near.
+
+"You don't suppose that can be Brenton!" he exclaimed. "It looks like
+him; but, ye immortals, how he's changed!"
+
+"Haven't we all?" Reed queried dryly.
+
+"Not so much. Why, man, he's actually groomed, and he walks without
+stepping on the edges of his own boots. Brenton!" He leaned out of the
+window, calling like a boy, "Hi, Brenton! Is it really you?"
+
+And so they met, after the years. Moreover, meeting, it was as if the
+years they had spent apart from each other, instead of increasing the
+distance between them, had brought them to a closer contact than any of
+which they hitherto had dreamed.
+
+According to their former custom, they tramped for miles, that afternoon,
+and talked as steadily as they tramped. At first sight, Whittenden had
+been delighted at the change in his companion; at a second, the delight
+increased, and the wonder mingled with it. It was little short of the
+marvellous to the rector of Saint-Luke-the-Good-Physician's that the
+raw, eager-minded youngster he had known as clerklet in a mountain inn
+could have developed into this personable man, a good talker, a good
+critic of this world's valuations, and, withal, not a little magnetic
+in his personal charm. At the first glance and the second, Whittenden
+rejoiced at what he saw. At the third, he doubted. The eyes were
+lambent still, but far less happy; the lips were more sensitive, albeit
+firmer, and every now and then there came a tired droop about their
+corners, as if life, even to the prosperous and popular rector of Saint
+Peter's, were just a degree less full of promise than he had fancied it
+would be. The raw young stripling had hoped all things; the mature,
+seemingly well-poised rector was having some little difficulty to prove
+them good.
+
+What was the matter, Whittenden asked himself. The ineradicable germs
+of pessimistic Calvinism? The uncongenial wife? Some lurking weakness
+in the man himself, that forbade his ever coming to a full content?
+Some residuum of jealous self-distrust, left over from his primitive
+beginnings, and causing him to look on every prosperous man as on a
+potential foe? The alternatives were too many and too complex to be
+settled by a two-hour study of the man beside him. Therefore
+Whittenden, being Whittenden, ended by putting the direct question.
+
+"In the final analysis, Brenton, what are you making out of your life?"
+
+The answer astounded him by its terse abruptness.
+
+"Chaos," Brenton said.
+
+Whittenden's mouth settled to the outlines of a whistle, albeit no
+sound came out of it.
+
+"_Chaos_ is a good, strong word, Brenton," he said, after a minute.
+"Exactly what is it that you mean?"
+
+Brenton stated his meaning, without mincing matters in the least.
+
+"I mean that I have no more business to be preaching in Saint Peter's
+than I would have to be holding forth upon the eternal fires of the
+most azure Calvinism."
+
+"But you made your choice deliberately."
+
+Brenton turned on him with some impatience.
+
+"What if I did? What is the choice of a boy of twenty, anyway? Of a
+cocksure, ambitious boy just breaking out of leading strings? I did
+choose--and yet, not so freely as I seemed to do. There was my mother
+in the background."
+
+"Of course," Whittenden assented quietly. "Who else, better?"
+
+"No one. Only--" Then Brenton curbed his rising excitement. Just as of
+old, he felt the overmastering wish to talk things out with Whittenden;
+but his maturity shrank from the idea, as the untrained boy had never
+done. "Anyway," he went on quietly; "I made my choice. I still believe
+it was the best choice open to me at the time. The only trouble is that
+I outgrew it."
+
+"Or it outgrew you," Whittenden suggested coolly.
+
+The dark tide surged up across Scott Brenton's lean cheeks.
+
+"Perhaps," he assented curtly. "Still, Whittenden, it doesn't seem that
+way to me. I feel myself tied down at every point."
+
+"What ties you?"
+
+"Creeds." Then Brenton laughed a little harshly. "Doubts, rather."
+
+Whittenden looked him in the eyes.
+
+"What is it that you're doubting, Brenton?" he inquired.
+
+"Everything. All the old landmarks of the ages," Brenton told him
+restively.
+
+Whittenden smiled.
+
+"You had parted with some of them, when I last said good bye to you,"
+he reminded Brenton. "You had quenched the sulphurous flames, and
+explained the more surprising of the miracles. You even had a doubt
+about creation's having been achieved in one hundred and seventy hours.
+What else has gone upon your conscientious scruples?"
+
+"Most things, including a good share of the Thirty-Nine Articles,"
+Brenton made curt answer. "Moreover, I have rewritten my early chapter
+in the Book of Genesis, until it says _Like unto God, knowing_, not
+_Good and Evil_, but _the Law_."
+
+"Hm-m-m!" Whittenden said slowly. "That isn't quite as original as you
+may think for, Brenton. A good many of us others have employed that
+form of the phrase before. Still, there's no use in taking it for a
+sort of cudgel, to knock down the people who still cling to the dear
+old phrases. And they are good phrases, too. They deserve to be revered
+for their antiquity, and for the hold they have kept upon all mankind;
+still I don't, myself, see why you need to take them any more literally
+than you do some of those old resonant lines of Homer. It's the spirit
+of the thing we're after, not the barren phrases."
+
+"Then what's the good of all your creed?" Brenton demanded shortly.
+
+"Our creed," Brenton corrected him quite gently; more gently, even,
+than he had spoken to Reed Opdyke on the night before. Indeed, Scott
+Brenton seemed to him vastly more in need of gentleness than did
+Opdyke. His trouble was as deep-seated; moreover, it was complicated by
+a curious ingrained weakness which, Whittenden judged, it would be hard
+for him to down. In Opdyke's place, Brenton would have turned his face
+to the wall and made a long, long moan. In Brenton's position, Opdyke
+would have kept his flags flying gayly, as long as there was a tatter
+of them left.
+
+Now, Brenton's accent showed that he resented the correction.
+
+"Ours, if you will; at least, for the present. But, after all, what is
+the good?"
+
+Whittenden's reply came promptly.
+
+"A common platform, where we can stand side by side, while we are doing
+our individual work."
+
+"But, if you don't believe in it?"
+
+A sudden gleam of mirth came into Whittenden's clear eyes.
+
+"Do you expect to put your foot on every single plank in any platform,
+Brenton? If you do, you'll need to have it built just to your measure.
+It seems to me that, in course of time, you'd find it a little lonely,
+to say nothing of the minor fact that people work together all the
+better for being on some sort of a common basis."
+
+"But is work the only thing?" Brenton queried rather absently.
+
+And the curly-headed rector by his side made swift, emphatic answer,--
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then why--"
+
+Whittenden interrupted him.
+
+"What do you believe, Brenton? For any man is bound to have some shreds
+of belief; that is, as long as he keeps out of the nearest asylum for
+the incurable insane."
+
+"My belief, or my profession?"
+
+"Hang your profession!" Whittenden said impatiently. "Or else, hang on
+to it, and keep still. But it's your belief I want, your creed, your
+working platform."
+
+"How do you know I have one?" Brenton asked rather irritably, for
+Whittenden's attitude was distinctly less satisfying to him than it had
+been of yore.
+
+"Because I know the kind of men Saint Peter's has been accustomed to
+demand. Also because I have talked to Reed Opdyke."
+
+"And Opdyke told you--"
+
+"Nothing; beyond the mere fact that he is very fond of you. Opdyke
+doesn't care for many people; his very affection tells its story.
+Still, that is beside the point. What tag ends of belief have you got
+left?"
+
+Even in its kindliness, the voice was masterful, the voice of the
+thoroughbred, when he gets in earnest. Brenton longed to stiffen
+himself against the mastery, but he could not. His ineffectual effort
+lent an edge of sarcasm to his tone.
+
+"When the eye of the parish is upon me, I read out the Nicene Creed in
+the deepest voice at my disposal. When--"
+
+"This is rather beneath your customary methods, Brenton," his companion
+interrupted him. "But go on."
+
+Brenton's lips shut hard together for a minute. Then he did go on, and
+in a totally different voice.
+
+"When I look myself squarely in the face, Whittenden, I find I can
+assent to just two points, no more."
+
+"And they?"
+
+"God. Universal law."
+
+"So far, so good. And man?" Whittenden queried.
+
+"Their corollary."
+
+"Exactly." Whittenden walked on in silence for a little way. "Well,
+what else do you want, Brenton?" he inquired.
+
+"Nothing. My people, however, want a great deal more."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Our ritual."
+
+"Can't you interpret it with any common sense?" The impatience again
+was manifest.
+
+"Not in common honesty." And Brenton lifted up his chin.
+
+A little laugh came to his companion's lips and eyes.
+
+"Why not?" he queried. "You don't expect our public schools to abandon
+the Aeneid and Homer, because they don't consider the old mythologies
+accurate history. You don't expect to give up the best of Hafiz and
+Omar, because you also come in contact with the worst of them. We'd be
+poorer, all our lives, by just so much. In the same way, why can't you
+take the best of our theologies as fact and love it, and, at the same
+time, keep a certain respect for the rest of them that you don't
+believe, the sort of respect you give an aged ancestor, a respect for
+what they have been to the world at large, not for what they are now to
+you? Belief, in the last analysis, is nothing but well-applied common
+sense."
+
+It was a long time before either of the men spoke again. In the end,
+Whittenden broke the silence.
+
+"Brenton, I'd have given a good deal to have known your parents," he
+said.
+
+"To weigh me up?" Brenton smiled. "You saw my mother: a strong,
+self-reliant, self-willed character, threaded through and through with
+Calvinism. She was totally unselfish, yet totally self-centred. In the
+same way, she was always on a battleground between the claims of her
+own rampant freewill and her sanctified belief in predestination. It's
+not an easy thing to analyze her."
+
+"And your father?"
+
+Brenton coloured hotly.
+
+"I was only ten days old, when he died, Whittenden; but the tradition
+has come down to me. If he hadn't been so weak, so totally
+self-indulgent, he'd have been a genius. Even in the worst of his
+self-indulgence, he had ten times my mother's logic. If he had had one
+tenth of her will power, he'd have counted. As it was, though,--utter
+annihilation. He died, and left no record. My mother helped it on, by
+never mentioning him, up to the very day she died."
+
+"Hm!" Whittenden said thoughtfully. "Perhaps she knows him better now."
+
+Brenton glanced at him curiously.
+
+"You still believe it?"
+
+"Of course. No; no use arguing from the point of view of the biologist
+and chemist, Brenton. It won't do you any good, nor me any harm. It's
+in me; I don't know whence or wherefore, so save your breath and use it
+on other things. I think your ancestry is all accounted for. As to
+environment: what does your wife say about it?"
+
+"The environment?" Brenton asked, a little bit perversely.
+
+"No; the highly individualistic platform you are erecting for yourself?
+Are you to leave room there for her?"
+
+"Hardly. She wouldn't mount it, if I did."
+
+"Doesn't share the doubts?"
+
+Brenton shook his head. As yet, he was loath to put into words the fact
+of his wife's adoption of her new creed. Appearances and his own
+forebodings to the contrary, it might be but a passing phase of her
+experience. The label of it, though, once affixed, would be well-nigh
+impossible of removal.
+
+"Katharine has never come so very much inside my professional life," he
+paltered.
+
+Whittenden pricked up his ears, partly at the statement, partly at the
+unfamiliar name. He had felt sure that he had heard "I, Scott, take
+thee, Catia." In his more mellow New York life, such transforming
+evolution was less common. However, names were a detail. It was the
+fact he challenged.
+
+"Your wife? But how can she stay outside it, Brenton?"
+
+"Oh, she's not outside it, in a sense. Before the boy came, she was in
+all the guilds and parish teas and that. Really," Brenton spoke with a
+blind optimism; "she was very popular. But, in the vital things one
+thinks and feels--Whittenden, I don't imagine any woman ever really can
+share those things with us men. We are created different. We can't go
+inside each other's shells."
+
+And in that final utterance, it seemed to Whittenden, Scott Brenton
+voiced the saddest phase of all his present unbelief.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
+
+
+"Still, Reed, I rather grudge the time," Whittenden said to his host
+when, dinner over, that same night, he flung himself into a chair at
+Opdyke's side. "For all practical purposes, it was a wasted afternoon.
+I'd much rather have been here with you."
+
+"You'd have been quite _de trop_, old man. Olive Keltridge was here,
+two hours, and filled me up with all the gossip of the town. Besides,
+you were filling yourself up with ozone, and preparing to make a night
+of it. Apropos--Ramsdell!"
+
+"Yes, sir?" Ramsdell appeared upon the threshold of the outer room.
+
+"Go to bed, like a Christian, when you get ready. No need for you to
+become a martyr, because Mr. Whittenden and I wish to carouse till all
+hours. When I need you, Mr. Whittenden will come to wake you, and you
+can appear in your pajamas, if you choose. Isn't that all right,
+Whittenden? Good night, Ramsdell." Then, as Ramsdell vanished, Reed
+settled himself with a little sigh. "It's a fearsome responsibility,
+Whittenden," he said; "to win this sort of sheep-dog devotion.
+Ramsdell, on my grilly days, would like nothing better than to stand
+and let me shy things at his head. It is beautiful; but it gets a
+trifle sultry. A little downright cussedness helps to clear the air
+occasionally; but cussed is the one thing Ramsdell isn't. I suppose it
+is because he is the product of the ages; it goes with his misplaced
+aspirates."
+
+Whittenden struck a match.
+
+"The sheep-dog thing is worth the having, though. Best hang on to it,
+Reed. It doesn't come to most of us too often."
+
+Opdyke eyed him rather mirthfully.
+
+"What's the matter, man?" he queried. "Did your own sheep dog growl at
+you, this afternoon?"
+
+"Mine?"
+
+"Brenton. He counts you as the great formative influence of his life,
+and adores you accordingly."
+
+"Not now. I knew he had been through the phase, Opdyke. In fact, I had
+rather counted on its lasting; but it hasn't."
+
+"From which I infer that he showed his teeth, to-day. What was the
+matter? Did you try to stroke his head, and accidentally hit him on the
+raw?"
+
+"Not consciously. It's only that I've lost all my helpful grip on him."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Because--to carry out your sheep-dog metaphor which, in reality,
+doesn't fit the case at all, Opdyke--he put his paw in mine, and then
+growled at me when I shook it."
+
+"I'm not so much surprised. Brenton has been on his nerves lately. I
+can't just see why, though."
+
+"Has he talked to you, Opdyke?"
+
+"Good Lord, yes! A man on his nerves is bound to talk to something,
+whether it's a responsible person like yourself, or a mere bedpost like
+me. It's the talking that's the main thing, the sense of exhilaration
+that comes with the discussion of depressing personalities. We're all
+alike, every man of us, Whittenden. Didn't I take my turn, last night?"
+
+"That's different."
+
+"Not a bit. Spine or conscience, it's all one, once it begins to raise
+a ruction. But about Brenton: how do you diagnose his disease?"
+
+Whittenden's reply came on the instant.
+
+"Trying to believe too many things too hard."
+
+"Hm!" Opdyke appeared to be considering. "Well, I think perhaps you've
+hit it. However, there are some extenuating circumstances. Give a man a
+dozen years or so of the mental starvation of a New England wilderness,
+and then all at once fill him chock full of new ideas, and he gets a
+pain within him, just as painful a pain as if it were in his tummy, not
+his mind. In time, it leads to chronic indigestion. That's what
+Brenton's got."
+
+"Yes; but that is cause, not extenuating circumstance," Whittenden
+objected.
+
+"It's extenuating, just the same. And then the wife! She is--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"A pill," Reed said briefly.
+
+"What sort?"
+
+"Born common and dense. Grown self-centred and conceited. Lately turned
+from ultra-ritualistic to incipient Eddyism."
+
+"That's bad."
+
+"Isn't it? No wonder Brenton's down and out, for the time being. The
+question is how we are to prevent its becoming chronic. Of course, this
+is the bare outline; you can fill in the details out of your own
+experience."
+
+"Praise heaven, I haven't any!" Whittenden responded piously.
+
+"So much the better for you, and so very much the worse for Brenton. I
+had counted on your being here to haul him out of his present mental
+Turkish bath, and hang him out on the line in the fresh air and sun. I
+can't." Reed made an expressive grimace at the couch. "Besides, I'm a
+little bit like old Knut on the seashore; my own toes are getting very
+wet. The worst of that matter is that Brenton knows it."
+
+Whittenden spoke tranquilly, his eyes on Opdyke's face, sure that he
+could rely upon the sense of humour in his friend.
+
+"Yes, Brenton does know it. Do you realize, Opdyke, that you're the
+fellow who heated up his Turkish bath, in the first place?"
+
+"What!" The word exploded with a violence that brought Ramsdell's head
+in at the open doorway.
+
+"Yes, you."
+
+Opdyke smiled at Ramsdell, in token of dismissal. Then,--
+
+"Not guilty!" he protested.
+
+"Yes, you are. I wormed it out of Brenton, in the end, in spite of his
+growling. It's too bad of me to tell you; and yet it seems only fair
+that you should get at the truth of the situation. Besides--You know
+you are a fearful egoist, Reed; we all are, for that matter. Besides,
+it may make you a little bit more tolerant of Brenton, may lead you to
+smooth him down where I have been rubbing him the wrong way. In fact,
+you owe it to him, to atone for the volcanic effect you have had on his
+theology."
+
+"Dear man, I haven't upset his blamed theology," Reed objected. "I'm
+sound enough; I wouldn't upset a mouse. Ask Ramsdell if I've ever
+argued against his belief in the literal greening apple, 'a wee bit
+hunripe, sir,' upon which Adam feasted."
+
+"Not in words. It's the fact of you that's so upsetting."
+
+"I've been accused unjustly of a good many things in my time,
+Whittenden. Besides," again there came the grimace at the couch; "it
+rather seems to me that I'm the one who has been upset."
+
+"That's the whole row. You are the first brick in the line. You bowled
+over Brenton; now he appears to be bowling over his wife. Yes, I mean
+it. If Brenton had held steady, she never would have wobbled, much less
+bolted off to Christian Science. She was keen enough to feel him
+tottering, and she evidently made up her mind to save herself from the
+impending ruins by taking refuge upon the other side of the street. I
+must say it was rather prudent of her. She had the sense to choose a
+new house built on a totally different stratum from her old one. If one
+collapsed, it couldn't well jar the other."
+
+"Hold on, Whittenden!" Reed broke in, after long waiting for a pause.
+"I am willing to take my share of blame for most things; but I'll be--"
+
+"Sh-h!" Whittenden warned him indolently. "Remember I'm a rector in
+good standing."
+
+"Then bring me a book of synonyms. Anyhow, I'll be it, before I'll take
+the responsibility of that Brenton woman's vagaries. Ask Olive."
+
+"I don't need to," Whittenden remarked at his cigar. "I married them.
+Likewise, I have seen Brenton, this very day. After collating those two
+references, I don't need Miss Keltridge for a commentary. As for
+Brenton--"
+
+Opdyke interrupted.
+
+"How do you figure out that I've been upsetting him?" he queried.
+
+Whittenden settled himself in his favourite position, low in his chair
+and with one hand flung upward to grasp the chair-top above his head.
+His eyes, fixed on Opdyke, were full of merriment.
+
+"Let's go back a little. When you first knew Brenton, he was a bit
+uncommon, the ordinary product of Calvinism flavoured with something
+vastly more hectic. That was inside him, that hectic splash in his
+blood; it made him imaginative, greedy of new ideas, greedy to prove
+that they were good. Moreover, he had been trained to believe that an
+irate Deity of unstable nerves presided over the universe; that He had
+created the world and beast and man in a series of experiments which
+had come off well, until it reached the last one, man; that man had
+gone bad in the making, and must be pursued and thrashed for all
+eternity on that account, unless he made an umbrella out of his
+acknowledged vices, and sat down underneath it and sang hymns to a harp
+accompaniment. Else, he was grilled eternally. But the gist of the
+whole matter was that man had gone bad in the making, and that his
+Maker was angry at him to the end of time. And that same blundering and
+angry Maker was the God one had to love and honour. Naturally, being
+constituted as he is, Brenton, once he had cut his wisdom teeth, turned
+balky, refused to see why he should love a God who behaved like a
+bad-tempered child that spites the toy he has broken and beats the wall
+where he has bumped his head. Meanwhile--"
+
+"Do I--" Opdyke was beginning.
+
+Whittenden waved aside the interruption.
+
+"No; you don't come in yet. Be patient. As I was going to say,
+meanwhile he went into his first laboratory and made the prompt
+discovery that nothing ever happens, that causes are set in motion ages
+and ages before they ever materialize into effects. That set him to
+thinking, set him to wondering why the thing that he was trained to
+call revealed religion should be the only lawless thing in all the
+universe. Why the same Deity should have created law, and then set
+Himself up in opposition to it, should have started the wheels to
+running, and then, every now and then, stuck a mighty finger in, to pry
+them apart and make them slip a cog, in deference to some later
+modification of His original plan. It was just about then that I found
+him. He was floundering in a perfect mire, composed of the dust of
+conflict mingled with penitential tears. Really, he was knee-deep in
+the muck; and I put in a good share of my vacation in trying to haul
+him back to solid ground."
+
+Opdyke nodded.
+
+"He has told me."
+
+"His side, only. Mine was a degree less serious, Reed. Sorry for him as
+I was, I couldn't help a certain amusement at seeing him get himself
+into such a mess over nothing. How any person with a fair share of
+common sense can--Well, I toiled over him, all summer. Talk about
+mines! I mined in him. I sank new shafts and I dug out new veins, and I
+presented samples of ore for his inspection. By the end of the summer,
+I'd got him to where he admitted that a law-abiding God was an
+improvement on his old, erratic, lawless, irate Deity; that it was
+treating Him with a long way more respect to endow Him with the
+attributes of a high-minded gentleman than to consider Him a mere
+purveyor of red-hot discipline for sins He had specifically created.
+Then, in the end, I put it squarely up to him: if he must preach at
+all, why not choose a church that stood for law and order in the
+universe, a church that, hanging to the old traditions, yet held out
+her arms to the new interpretations of the law and gospel, instead of
+sticking to the cast-iron, white-hot Calvinism which hadn't marched an
+inch, hadn't so much as changed the focus of its spectacles, since the
+pre-Darwin days of the very first of his ancestral parsons."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well." And Whittenden pulled himself up short. "This is where you
+begin to come in on the scene, you reprobate. I had just got him on his
+legs, marching sanely along, to the tune of 'All Thy works shall praise
+Thy name,' when the doctors came lugging you home into his very parish,
+laid you down underneath his very nose. No wonder you upset him,
+completely bowled him over off his theological pins. His God was just
+and loving and logical, even if a little bit more given to personal
+interference than any but a Calvinistic God is supposed to be. And here
+were you, from all accounts a law-abiding citizen--of course the
+theologian in him failed to take the black powder into account--smitten
+down in your prime by what he was electing to call the hand of Divine
+Providence. Of course, it tousled up all the notions I had been
+stroking down so carefully. He came on a knot--from his own story, I
+think it was the question as to why a purely innocent Opdyke was chosen
+as an object of wrathful vengeance. Then he immediately went panicky.
+That's the erratic strain in him. Up to a certain point, he's logical;
+then he gets into a seething mass of mismatched syllogisms. In this
+case, if Providence was good, and you also were good, then Providence
+wouldn't have knocked you into a cocked hat. No matter now about the
+sympathy of my phrase; I want you to get the gist of the whole
+situation. Well, he turned and twisted that around into form _AAA_,
+_EAE_, and so on down the line; and, worse luck, he twisted himself
+with it till he lost all his point of view, got dizzy, and missed his
+footing utterly. The original trouble lay in his sheer inability to
+tally up you and a benign Providence into any proper sort of a sum.
+Therefore, one of you must be improper and, hence, must be abolished.
+Therefore, as you were very weighty and manifestly refused to budge, he
+proceeded to abolish Providence."
+
+"Hm. Well." Opdyke spoke thoughtfully. "I begin to see. However, even
+if I am to blame, I still insist upon it I'm not guilty. Meanwhile,
+what now?"
+
+"Meanwhile, he's become so enamoured of the abolishing process that
+he's keeping on. Unless we can contrive to break up the habit, in the
+end he will analyze himself into his original elements, and then
+abolish those."
+
+Reed laughed. Then he said slowly,--
+
+"Poor beggar!"
+
+"Yes," Whittenden assented, with sudden gravity; "that is just it. Poor
+beggar! And now, the worst of it all is that, unless we break it up at
+once, it will have to run its course, like any other disease."
+
+"You call it a disease?"
+
+"In his case, I do. Brenton isn't after any working truth to help along
+the rest of us; he's started hunting the _ignis fatuus_ of abstract
+verity, provable to its utmost limit. Taken as mental gymnastics, it is
+doubtless a fine exercise. Taken as a spiritual tonic to a lot of
+world-tired fellow mortals, I confess I doubt its inherent value."
+
+"You told him so?"
+
+"In all honour, as an older man inside the same profession, I couldn't
+do much else."
+
+"And he?"
+
+"Resented it, exactly as you or I would have resented it, if we had
+happened to be standing in his spiritual shoes. I couldn't blame him,
+Reed; and yet I'm sorry."
+
+Reed nodded.
+
+"I know. Those things always take it out of one. Besides, it's hard
+lines to help in upsetting your own pedestal. I'm sorry that Brenton
+took it badly, Whittenden. I didn't think it of him; you have counted
+so much to him, for years."
+
+Whittenden spoke a little sadly.
+
+"He thinks that he has outgrown me, Reed; therefore he won't feel the
+hurt of it, one half so much."
+
+Opdyke looked up sharply, a world of comprehension in his brave brown
+eyes.
+
+"But it has hurt you, Whittenden."
+
+"Yes," his companion confessed. "It has. It has hit me hard on my
+besetting sin, Reed, the liking to know that I'm of use to people. And
+I was of use to Brenton; I'd hoped to keep the old relation to the end;
+but it's impossible. I found that out, to-day."
+
+"It depends on what you call being of use," Opdyke retorted. "You may
+not have coddled up his Ego, and patacaked his nerves; but there's
+sometimes a long way more helpfulness in a good thrashing than in all
+the coddlings since the world began. And Brenton has had an infernal
+amount of coddling lately; there's no denying that. It's not alone the
+women; it is sensible men like Doctor Keltridge and my father, men who
+ought to be filing his teeth, not softening them up with goodies.
+However, that's as it is. What will be the end of it, do you think?"
+
+"Smash; unless you hold him, Reed."
+
+"Me? I?"
+
+"Yes, you. I don't mean--I'm in earnest now; I hate to see a good man
+chucking a good profession, and, unless he steadies down, he is bound
+to chuck it--I don't mean any nonsense about your owing it to him. I
+mean that you can hold him steady longer than anybody else."
+
+"Not you?" Opdyke's accent was incredulous.
+
+"My grip on him is gone. In the past, I may have helped him. All I
+could say, this afternoon, only rubbed him the wrong way, and increased
+the notion that he's cherishing, the notion that he's an uncomprehended
+genius. In heaven's name, Reed," and Whittenden's fist came crashing
+down on the arm of his chair; "is anything in this whole world more
+hard to fight than that same pose of being misunderstood? Nine times
+out of ten, it is mere pose. The tenth time, it is mere paranoia, and
+hence more manageable. No. My hold on Brenton is all gone. As I say, he
+has outgrown me; I still believe in my immortal soul, and a few such
+other trifles that no laboratory can prove. To be sure, you believe
+them, too; but, if you're going to manage Brenton, keep the beliefs
+tucked out of sight."
+
+"Where's my hold on him, then?" Reed queried.
+
+Whittenden, bending forward, laid his hand across the rug.
+
+"This," he said quietly; and, strange to say, the words brought no
+sting to Reed Opdyke's mind.
+
+Nevertheless, he objected to the fact.
+
+"It seems so much like gallery play, Whittenden," he urged. "It's a bit
+nasty to be making capital out of a thing like that."
+
+Whittenden shook his head, as, settling back again, he flung his hand
+up into the old resting place.
+
+"Not if it's given you for just that purpose," he answered then. "No,
+Reed, hear me out. It never has been your way to dodge responsibilities;
+in the end, you're sure to buck up against this one, so you may as well
+take it now as ever. This thing appears to be your present asset.
+Properly managed, it can bring you no end of influence. Your friends,
+who really know you, will watch you hanging on to yourself like grim
+death; and, in time, they'll come to where they'll trust your grip to
+pull them out of danger, too, when they get to funking. It's an
+almighty hard job you've got ahead of you, and an endless one; still,
+knowing you, I know you will put it through and come out of it with
+your colours flying. Meanwhile," the clear eyes came back to focus;
+"hang on to Brenton."
+
+"If I can."
+
+"As long as you can, I mean. The time may come when, like myself,
+you'll have to let him go. In the mean time, though, he is worth the
+holding."
+
+"Brenton is pure gold," Reed said quietly. "I have known him for many
+years."
+
+But his companion shook his head.
+
+"Gold, if you will; but not the purest. There is a dash of alloy we may
+as well admit, at the start. Else, it will only muddle things, later
+on. Brenton is good stuff, but a little weak. There's something in him
+that always will make him stumble and fall down just short of his
+ideals."
+
+"Naturally, being human," Opdyke assented rather dryly. "For that
+matter, Whittenden, which one of us does not?"
+
+But Whittenden made no answer. His hands clasped now at the back of his
+head, his eyes were resting thoughtfully upon the bright, brave face
+before him, a thinner face than it had been used to be, more hollow
+about the temples where the wavy hair clung closely; upon the swaddled
+figure which, only a year before, had tramped the Colorado mountains,
+lording it over many men. And now, to the burden of his own that Reed
+was bearing, he had added the responsibility of watching over Brenton,
+of guarding Brenton's weakness with his own great strength. Was it just
+and right to thrust this second burden on to Opdyke? However,
+self-forgetfulness comes best by focussing all one's energy upon the
+victim next in line; and Reed Opdyke, just at the present crisis,
+needed nothing else one half so much as self-forgetfulness.
+Nevertheless, the pity of it all, the seeming heartlessness, surged in
+on Whittenden. It would have been far easier for him to have tried to
+lighten Opdyke's burden than to increase its heaviness. But ease was
+not the main thing, after all.
+
+Suddenly he flung himself forward in his chair, and put his two hands
+down upon the straight, lean shoulders underneath the rug.
+
+"Reed," he said, with an abruptness he did not often show to any one;
+"if one man ever loved another, it's I with you. For God's sake, then,
+don't let the time ever come between us when I must stop being of some
+little use to you, as I've just had to do in the case of Brenton."
+
+But, even while he spoke, he knew there was no need for Opdyke's prompt
+reply,--
+
+"I fancy it never would come to that between the two of us. We've faced
+too many bad half-hours together. If only I could--"
+
+Whittenden understood. He rose, thrust his hands into his pockets,
+turned away and tramped across the room.
+
+"You always have, old man; now more than ever. And, every now and then,
+we parsons need it, need to be plucked out of our studies and set down
+face to face with life. It's because I'm owing you so much that I'd
+like to square up the account a little. Reed, I'm glad you sent for me,
+no matter if the reason was an ugly one."
+
+And then, quite of his own initiative, he went away in search of
+Ramsdell. All at once there had swept over him the memory of their
+talk, the night before, and the memory overwhelmed him with its
+tragedy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
+
+
+"Yes, he sent for me, about nine o'clock." Doctor Keltridge, sitting in
+the window seat beside Opdyke, swung his heels like a boy, in gleeful
+recollection. "Of course, it was _sotto voce_, as it were, for he's the
+king pin of the Christian Science row, and it never would do to let it
+get about. When I got there, I found him all doubled up with asthma,
+wheezing like a grampus. 'Damn it, man,' he said, as soon as he caught
+a glimpse of me; 'I've been praying since six o'clock, and I'm getting
+worse, every minute! Give me something, quick, or I shall die.'"
+
+And then the doctor went off into a roar of laughter over this latest
+victory of medicine.
+
+"He came out all right?"
+
+"Of course. People don't die of asthma; at least, not in his stage.
+They only get beastly uncomfortable. I had him asleep, within an hour."
+
+"Yes, and next time?" Opdyke inquired.
+
+"He'll go through the same rigmarole again. I suppose, when the fit
+comes on, he will telephone to headquarters for some sort of absent
+treatment. What charms me is the way those fellows seem to turn on the
+same tap, whatever the disease. A child down in Oak Street fell into
+boiling water, only just the other day. The neighbours heard him
+shrieking, and finally they telephoned to me. When I went into the
+house, the poor little sinner was writhing all over the bed and howling
+with the pain. Beside the bed, knitting a purple tippet, sat a healer,
+giving treatment, while she worked."
+
+"Fact?"
+
+"I can produce affidavits," Doctor Keltridge answered grimly. "What's
+more, I am going to do it soon. They can make fools of themselves, if
+they choose--only the dear Lord got ahead of them, and did it first;
+but, while I live to fight, they shall not butcher their little
+babies."
+
+Reed nodded his approval. Then,--
+
+"What did you do in this case?" he inquired, with more than a show of
+interest.
+
+"Called in a policeman to see fair play. As it happened, he had a child
+of his own, so he fell to work in earnest. We turned out the woman,
+packed off the family into the next room, and went to work with oil and
+cotton. I'm afraid it was too late to do much good. If it was, though,
+I'll promise you I'll make Rome howl."
+
+"Can you?" Reed asked practically.
+
+"At least, I can try. As I say, I'm fond of babies; they have so much
+potential humanity bottled up inside of them. I will not have them
+slaughtered, if I can help it." Then, to all seeming, he digressed
+sharply. "By the way, Reed, have you seen the Brenton baby? No; of
+course you haven't. It's five months, now, ugly as sin, and the
+brightest little youngster you ever set your eyes on."
+
+Opdyke stirred himself to a show of interest that was far from genuine.
+He never had felt himself especially drawn to babies; they seemed to
+him mussy and invertebrate. In fact, he realized with disconcerting
+suddenness, they shared some of his own least lovely attributes.
+However, whether the subject interested him or not, he would keep it up
+as long as he could, for the simple sake of lengthening out the
+doctor's visit. Therefore he said,--
+
+"Brenton is immensely pleased with it."
+
+"Well he may be. The baby is a charming little beggar, full of
+ingratiating tricks, and anybody knows Brenton needs everything of that
+kind he can get." Then swiftly the doctor brought his digression to a
+focus. "Well, that's just a case in point," he said triumphantly.
+
+Opdyke laughed.
+
+"Really, doctor, I'm afraid I don't quite follow," he said.
+
+"Your fault, boy. You've not been paying proper attention to me; you
+were off on a sidetrack of your own laying. I was talking about the
+Brenton baby and its chances to get fair play, especially when it comes
+to teeth."
+
+Light dawned on Opdyke.
+
+"Oh, I see. You mean Mrs. Brenton may take a hand?"
+
+"Morally sure. It's her child, too, worse luck! There is no legal help
+for the bad matter--yet. She will insist upon it that sin has a claim
+upon the child, and advise it to hoist itself above the sin."
+
+"Is she such a--"
+
+The doctor interrupted, less out of charity for Mrs. Brenton than from
+his own impatient testiness.
+
+"Wait and see, boy. Wait and see. It is quite evident that she's a gone
+case, that nothing can save her. Sometimes, I even shudder for her
+husband."
+
+"Brenton? He's immune."
+
+"There's never any telling. She and her friends probably have been at
+work with pick and shovel, for months, trying to undermine his
+foundations. They are an insidious crew, Reed, totally insidious. If a
+man is the least bit nervous, their absent-treatment methods get in
+their work with a fatal effect sometimes. I've been watching them for
+years. They mine and countermine, until it isn't safe to predict who is
+immune and who isn't. For all either of us know, you may be doomed to
+be the next victim. If you are, though, send for me. I'll cure you of
+it, if it takes a dose of lysol. Well, good bye, boy. I'll drop in
+again, within a day or so."
+
+The doctor went his way, flinging back a trail of chaff as long as his
+voice could carry to the room above, a room curiously dim and still, it
+seemed to him, as he came out into the strident sunshine of the July
+day. Once in the street, moreover, and safely out of range of Opdyke's
+windows, his fun dropped from him, and he shook his sturdy shoulders,
+as if he were trying to shake them free from an ugly, yet invisible,
+burden.
+
+"There's a change there," he muttered to himself; "and I'll be hanged
+if I can analyze it. It's a curious sort of settling down of the boy's
+whole nature, as if he had thrown off some maddening strain or other,
+as if he were getting some new sort of grip upon himself. I wonder what
+it is. He's not better, nor worse; it can't be his health, then.
+Bodily, he is just about holding his own; nervously, he is steadying. I
+believe I'll talk it up with Olive; he may have given her a clue."
+
+Olive, however, questioned, had no ideas upon the subject. She too had
+noticed the change, had felt it, rather; it was too slight really to be
+noticed. She had wondered at it. It was as if Opdyke were slowly
+tightening all his contacts with what of life there still was left to
+him, determining to make the best of a bad matter, and to extract all
+the enjoyment he was able out of his narrowing surroundings.
+
+Reason about the cause of this as Olive would, she could not fathom it.
+Was Opdyke merely sickening of the individual members of his scanty
+calling list, and seeking to increase its variety? Or was he slowly
+gathering up some of the broken ties, ready for the day when once more
+he should leave his prison and walk out among them, a free man? Of two
+things, though, Olive was assured. The change had started a good two
+months earlier, had dated, as nearly as she could reckon backwards,
+from the time of Whittenden's brief visit. And the change, whatever
+else its alterations in the life of Opdyke, had made not one grain of
+difference with their friendship. Indeed, it seemed to Olive now and
+then that Opdyke turned to her society the more eagerly after a
+protracted season of receiving varied calls. However, well he might
+turn to Olive! It was fifteen months, now, since his accident, fifteen
+months that the brace of New York surgeons had professed their
+inability to predict a future. Uncertainty like that is bound to tell
+on any man; and, throughout it all, Olive Keltridge never once had
+failed him.
+
+That Opdyke was renewing, after his limited fashion, many of his old
+associations was a fact evident to the whole town. The knowledge that
+he was lowering his year-long barricade, as a matter of course, brought
+to his door a horde of visitors bound to be more or less unwelcome. As
+a matter of fact, on one pretext or another, nine tenths of them were
+turned away. Ramsdell saw to that. Despite his misplaced aspirates, he
+possessed a perfect genius for uttering gracious fibs with a totally
+impenetrable smile of deprecation. Moreover, he knew from long
+experience Reed's choice in people, and he read strangers keenly.
+Therefore more than one potential visitor, moved by a combination of
+curiosity and benevolence, was assured that "Mr. Hopdyke 'as 'ad a very
+bad night, and is just gone off to sleep," although Dolph Dennison's
+coat tails or Olive Keltridge's linen skirt might have been vanishing
+through the doorway as the less welcome guest came in at the front
+gate. In spite of the moral certainties of the later guest, it was
+impossible to prove that Ramsdell was lying flagrantly. One could only
+smile, and hand in a card, with the agreeable surety that it would be
+referred to the upstairs potentate and pigeonholed in Ramsdell's
+retentive memory as ticket for admission later on, or else a permanent
+rejection label, past all argument or gainsaying.
+
+Prather, the novelist, was one of the first names on the lengthening
+list of those who were to be admitted at all sorts of hours. Reed
+Opdyke accepted him in mirthful gratitude to the Providence which had
+arranged so equable a _quid pro quo_. Prather was manifestly out for
+copy, despite his constant disavowals of what he termed an envious
+slander hatched by Philistine minds. Reed Opdyke's sense of humour was
+still sufficiently acute to assure him that there was every possibility
+that, at some more or less remote period, he would find a full-length
+portrait of himself in Prather's pages, a portrait all the more easily
+recognizable by reason of the disguises which would draw attention to
+the essential human fact hidden behind their veils. On the other hand,
+however, Prather himself was offering to Reed no small amusement. To a
+man used to the wide spaces of the mountain landscapes, to the vast
+secrets hidden within the bowels of the mines, it seemed little short
+of the incredible that any human being at all worthy of the name could
+be so infinitely fussy over trifles, could wear himself to shreds over
+framing a bit of repartee, could spend a tortured morning, reducing to
+the limits of a rhythmic paragraph the illimitable glories of the earth
+and sky. And the ways by which he sought to carry out his achievement!
+These baffled any comprehension born of Opdyke's brain.
+
+The day after the doctor's expressed anxiety as concerned the Brenton
+baby, Prather, coming to call, was more than ordinarily specific.
+
+"My dear fellow, I am tired to death," he said, as he sat down at
+Opdyke's side, hitched up his trousers to prevent unseemly bagging and
+smoothed his coat into position.
+
+"Working?" Reed queried.
+
+"Like a dog. At least, that's the accepted phrase. The fact is, my
+terrier snored aloud, all the time I was about it. No. I assure you, I
+didn't read my stuff to him, as I went on." And Prather paused to laugh
+merrily at his own humour. Indeed, it was his own appreciation of his
+humour which led him to his frequent calls on Reed, for the little man
+was generous at heart, and loath to waste a really clever thing, when
+it might be doing untold good. "But still," he went on; "it shows the
+fallacy of the phrase. I work like a dog, and the real dog slumbers.
+Good joke, that! But, for a fact, I have been working."
+
+"Another novel?"
+
+"Yes. I tell the publishers it must be my swan song. Really, I am
+getting an old man. But they refuse to see it; I expect they will keep
+me in harness till I am--in my dotage," he added, with a reckless
+disregard of any possible comment which the phrase might call up in
+Opdyke's mind.
+
+Opdyke was proof against temptation. Instead,--
+
+"How are you getting on?" he asked.
+
+"Very well; very well indeed, considering my breakfast," Prather
+responded unexpectedly. "I have done seventeen hundred words, to-day."
+
+"Really?" Opdyke's accent concealed the fact that he had no idea
+whether the record was great or small. Then he yielded to his
+curiosity. "But what has your breakfast to do about it, Prather?"
+
+The little novelist settled himself more deeply in his chair, and
+caressed his small mustache with two small hands which totally failed
+to conceal the smile behind them.
+
+"I was hoping you would ask the question, my dear fellow. It's a new
+idea of mine, and, really, I am not at all ashamed of it. Clever, I
+call it, do you know," he added, with rising enthusiasm. "In the old
+days, when I was a callow beginner, I used to eat at random. Deuce
+knows the messes it kicked up, too, with my plots! Now I know better. I
+fit my meals, my breakfast above all, to the kind of chapter I have
+ahead of me. When I need to be analytic, I eat beans and certain
+cereals, and drink black coffee very hot and very fast. Before a love
+scene, I eat curried things or else put on the stronger kinds of
+sauces. For the final parting of the lovers, I even have used both. And
+then for tragedy, for utter grief, I take to cold things, cold things
+rather underdone, if possible. My wife is a great help to me, in all
+this planning. She admires my work tremendously; most women do, and she
+has helped me work the theories out." Suddenly he brought himself up
+with a round turn that left him facing Opdyke. "Opdyke," he said
+abruptly; "you ought to have a wife."
+
+"But I don't write any novels," Reed protested, a trifle blank at the
+swift attack.
+
+"No; but you may. You've had experiences, and you've any amount of
+time," Prather argued kindly. "I'd help you get a start, you know. And
+then, besides, you would find it so very comforting."
+
+"The novel?"
+
+"No; the wife. She could take Ramsdell's place, you know."
+
+Reed chuckled.
+
+"She would need to be a lusty Amazon, Prather, if she took the contract
+of lugging me about."
+
+But Prather waved his hand in circles that were intended to be
+explanatory.
+
+"Not a bit, Opdyke; not a bit," he said, with effervescent cheer. "It
+would take you a little while to get her, don't you know; and, by that
+time, you'd be up and about, really almost as well as ever. And there
+are things, you know, things about your buttons and your meals, that
+nobody but a wife can ever manage properly. Take my advice, Opdyke, the
+advice of a veteran, and go about it. Then, when you're on your feet
+again, you'll have her ready to look out for you."
+
+Reed smiled rather inscrutably to himself.
+
+"Plenty of time, Prather," he said.
+
+"No, no." Prather rose. "Best be about it soon. You'll find it makes
+the greatest difference with you. Besides, as I say, it is time you
+went about it, or you will get on your legs, the same lonely bachelor
+you were when you went off them. And Doctor Keltridge says that you are
+gaining fast."
+
+Reed looked up suddenly, incisively.
+
+"Did Doctor Keltridge say that?" he demanded.
+
+"Well, not in those exact words; but that was the burden of his song,
+the motif of his story, if I may speak so shoppishly." Again Prather's
+hand sought his mustache. "It is quite evident to everybody, Opdyke,
+that you are on the gain."
+
+Reed Opdyke watched him out of sight. Then,--
+
+"Is it?" he said a little bitterly. "I wonder why his _everybody_ must
+needs exclude me."
+
+Next day, Olive gone and no one else in prospect, Reed lay staring out
+through the open window into the green trees on the lawn, staring
+listlessly, with no especial thought of envy for the birds hopping
+among the branches. Indeed, even to Reed himself, that was the most
+tragic phase of the whole tragic situation: that his hours of restless
+longing seemed to have come to a final end. Always too sane to waste
+regrets upon futilities, he had come now to a point of passive
+acceptance of the immutable bad in his surroundings, an active effort
+only to snatch at whatever good remained. It did not affect his
+attitude in the very least that, nine days out of every ten, he had to
+take a spiritual microscope to hunt the good. One of the longest
+lessons is the learning to pick up the crumbs of comfort, when one has
+been used to munching the whole loaf. However, Reed was conning the
+lesson steadily, learning it by slow degrees.
+
+This time, however, he was more occupied in studying how best to face
+certain inevitable bad half-hours before him than he was in picking any
+crumbs of comfort from their prospect. It seemed to him a little bit
+unfair, now that he knew past all gainsaying what the future held for
+him, to go on allowing his parents and some friends--well, Olive, if
+one must be so specific--to continue hoping against hope that he would
+ever be well, and on his legs, and walking. Out of his own experience,
+Opdyke knew that it is uncertainty which kills. Had he any right to go
+on in silence, and not end the suspense once and for all? Of course, it
+was the place of the surgeons to utter the decree of condemnation.
+However, as long as they were not sufficiently astute to find out the
+truth of the prospect, then, in all honour, was it not up to him?
+
+There was no longer any hope of his recovery; that he knew of a surety,
+knew as, every now and then, one does know things unprovable. He had
+taken the knowledge pluckily, albeit it had told on him more than he
+would have been willing to confess. It would have told on him still
+more, though, had it not been for his week with Whittenden. All that
+week, he had clung to Whittenden, as the drowning man clings to the
+life raft. In the end, Whittenden had dragged him to the shore. And now
+it was his own turn to do as much for his parents, and for Olive. Yes,
+for Olive. Poor Olive! Yes, she was bound to take it hard.
+
+So lost in thought of Olive was he that he started violently, when he
+heard coming up the stairway to him the unmistakable rustle of feminine
+skirts. He forgot the tree tops instantly, forgot his questionings.
+Olive was coming back again. Doubtless, after her frequent custom, she
+was returning to tell him something that she had forgotten. He turned
+his head expectantly. Olive would have been welcome, a dozen times a
+day; she was the one person in the world who never antagonized him,
+never bored him, never tired him with irrelevant chatter. Now, without
+in the least realizing the fact, he was shaping his lips into a smile
+of eager welcome. Only an instant later, the smile had vanished, and
+there had come into his brave brown eyes a look astonishingly like
+consternation.
+
+Not Olive, but Katharine Brenton, stood upon his threshold; and, as
+Opdyke was too well aware, for the time being that threshold was
+totally unguarded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
+
+
+With a rustle born of plenteous starch, a quiver of nodding roses on
+her hat and an ultra-evident aroma of violet preceding her coming,
+Katharine swept across the floor and halted beside Opdyke's couch. Even
+in the first instant of keen resentment at her appearing, Opdyke was
+conscious of no small surprise at beholding her so well dressed. In his
+crass ignorance, he had yet to learn that, in the minds of the elect,
+good clothes are an essential weapon in contesting the claims of
+sin-born disease. Indeed, he confessed to himself that, had Katharine
+only been a shade more self-distrustful, she would not have been a bad
+looking woman. It was very plain, however, that even the salary of the
+rector of Saint Peter's would not hold out long before the demands made
+upon it by the rector's lady's wardrobe. Moreover, it was a little bit
+surprising to find the country daisy expanded to the limits of a prize
+sunflower such as this.
+
+"You must remember me, Mr. Opdyke," she was saying effusively. "Such an
+old, old acquaintance, you know! It must be at least seven or eight
+years, since I first knew you. I was only little Katharine Harrison
+then; I remember perfectly how shy and gauche I was, and how terrified
+at you. Shall I sit here? Thank you. And you were very nice to me. I
+often tell Scott how much it meant to me. Really, it was my first
+introduction to the big, big world."
+
+Opdyke rallied swiftly to this unlooked-for demand upon his social
+instincts.
+
+"No one ever would have suspected it from seeing you, Mrs. Brenton," he
+assured her, with manful falsity.
+
+She crackled her starch at him, with a buoyant pleasure in his words.
+
+"You have all your old ingratiating tricks of speech," she told him.
+"Really, nowadays, you ought to be steadying down a little, Mr.
+Opdyke."
+
+"And thinking on my latter end?" he queried, although he flushed a
+little at her words. "It's not profitable to meditate upon a blank
+monotony, you know."
+
+Swiftly she bent forward, resting her elbow on her white linen knee,
+her chin on her white silk palm.
+
+"But why let it be monotonous?" she demanded.
+
+Reed made a wry face, ostensibly at his own situation, actually at the
+brutally frank question from what was, in fact, a total stranger.
+
+"I really don't see how I well can help it, Mrs. Brenton," he said
+quietly.
+
+Lifting her chin from her palm, she clasped her gloves in her lap, and
+looked down at her host with manifest encouragement.
+
+"Only by lifting yourself above it, Mr. Opdyke," she enlightened him.
+
+Reed smiled grimly.
+
+"I'm very heavy; it would take too large a derrick," he replied. "How
+is Brenton, to-day?"
+
+"Quite as usual, thank you. Of course, we both are so busy that I see
+comparatively little of him," Katharine said serenely.
+
+Reed caught at the digression.
+
+"Of course. I suppose the youngster keeps you very busy, Mrs. Brenton."
+
+"Oh, it isn't the baby. I have a wonderful nurse for him, some one
+Doctor Keltridge recommended."
+
+Again Reed caught at the chance for a digression.
+
+"Doctor Keltridge is a wonderful man," he remarked, a little bit
+maliciously.
+
+Too late, he realized his blunder, for without delay, Katharine seized
+the opportunity to snap back to her former position.
+
+"Yes, after his fashion. It is only rather sad to see so broad an
+intellect buried under the masses of old-time tradition. He gives a
+strychnine tonic when we others would merely pour ourselves into the
+gap, and fight disease with mind."
+
+Opdyke's brown eyes became inscrutable.
+
+"But do you think that mind can do the business, Mrs. Brenton?" he
+inquired.
+
+"Yes, if we apply it in all earnestness. Of course, one must first
+believe; then the rest of it is easy."
+
+"But," Opdyke's eyes were still inscrutable, although his accent was
+that of the eager student; "do you think that one's mind always matches
+up to the size of the disease? I should suppose that, just now and
+then, they might not fit."
+
+"Dear Mr. Opdyke, there is always the Universal Mind on whom we are
+allowed to call, in time of need," Katharine assured him, with an
+unction that made Opdyke long to pitch her, head first, starch and all,
+through the open window just behind her. No wonder Brenton looked about
+all in, if this was the sort of domestic table talk dished up for him!
+
+There was a short pause, broken only by the faint crackling of starchy
+petticoats. Then Katharine unclasped her hands, straightened her hat,
+and clasped her hands anew, this time slightly above the region of the
+belt.
+
+"Mr. Opdyke," she said gravely then; "something within me, here, urges
+me to give you the message."
+
+"The--?" Reed inquired politely.
+
+"The message of our faith. When I came in, it was my only idea to drop
+in on you and cheer you up a bit; but now--"
+
+During her impressive pause, Opdyke reflected that it was plain the
+woman was lying flagrantly, that she had come to see him with fell
+purpose. He loathed that purpose absolutely; he resented it most
+keenly. None the less, the one course open to him was to submit as
+little ungraciously as he was able. No moral force would be able to
+dislodge his guest; and Ramsdell could not well be summoned, to pluck
+forth the rector's lady and escort her, willy-nilly, to the outer door.
+
+But Katharine's pause had ended.
+
+"But now I feel that it would be wrong for me to neglect the chance to
+sow my little seed in the soil so plainly harrowed for its growth. Mr.
+Opdyke," and now the roses trembled with her earnestness; "do you
+realize at all the meaning of the word _disease_?"
+
+Reed yielded to a wayward impulse left over from his boyhood.
+
+"It generally is supposed to be connected rather intimately with germs,
+Mrs. Brenton," he assured her.
+
+"By no means. And so you really do cling to the old, old fallacies? It
+seems too bad, and for such a man as you are. Most of us, you know,
+have cast them over. We now are quite convinced that disease is but
+another name for sin and unbelief; that the universal cure lies in the
+submission of one's will to the dictates of the Universal Mind."
+
+"Really? How interesting!" Opdyke's courteous voice lacked none of the
+symptoms of complete conviction.
+
+Katharine leaned a little nearer.
+
+"Mr. Opdyke, little as you may believe it, physical disease has no real
+existence."
+
+"Indeed?" Reed queried politely, quite as if the question had no
+personal significance for him.
+
+"Not at all. It only shows the inherent weakness of the one who
+believes himself an invalid."
+
+This time, Reed felt himself suddenly turning balky.
+
+"Oh, I say!" he protested.
+
+Katharine laid a steadying hand upon the couch, and Opdyke eyed the
+steadying hand much as if it had been a toad.
+
+"Mr. Opdyke, even in so sad a case as yours, the remedy is quite within
+your hands," she told him gravely.
+
+Reed's sense of humour came back again to his relief.
+
+"How do you make that out?" he asked her, taking his eyes from the
+potential hopping toad to rest them on the face before him, a face
+serenely smug with the consciousness of its own sanctification.
+
+"If you would only trust and believe, would throw your whole nature
+into tune with spiritual law and order, you could get up off from that
+couch, tomorrow, and walk down to the post office and back again."
+
+Reed lost the great essential fact, unhappily, in gloating over the
+finale. Why didn't the woman say the butcher shop, and done with it,
+since she was so set upon a rhetorical slump of some sort? However, he
+smothered his interest in the detail, and went back again to the
+central fact.
+
+"It only rests with you how long you are to lie here, Mr. Opdyke,"
+Katharine was reiterating solemnly, yet with the same carefully
+manufactured smile that had appeared upon her lips simultaneously with
+the first expressions of her creed.
+
+Reed experienced a sudden wave of physical nausea, as he watched it.
+
+"I wish that I could believe you, Mrs. Brenton," he said dryly.
+"Unfortunately, it is quite impossible."
+
+Katharine did her best to make her smile more luminous.
+
+"You think so, Mr. Opdyke? So long as you will not believe, you will
+not throw off your weakness of the body. You must face disease, not
+yield to it. You must lift yourself above it, must plant your feet upon
+it in firm disdain, and, using it as a footstool, arise from its ugly
+foundations to a perfect and sinless state of health." Again she
+paused, and fixed her rapt gaze upon his face which slowly was
+reddening and stiffening into something closely akin to a blinding
+rage. "Mr. Opdyke, believe me: your poor, broken body is only the outer
+guise of your erring mind. Dismiss your error; throw yourself
+unresistingly into the vast and placid pool of the Cosmic Ego, and you
+will arise from your bed of pain, a cured and healthy man."
+
+A little vein beside Reed's temple swelled slightly and began to throb.
+It seemed to him that this impossible woman was tearing his nerves
+apart in a remorseless effort to get at the inmost secrets of his
+consciousness. By all the laws of self-preservation, he had every right
+to drive her from the room. By all the laws of chivalrous courtesy, he
+must lie there, prostrate, at her mercy, and listen to her with an
+unflinching smile, until the wheels of her enthusiasm should run
+down--if, indeed, they ever did.
+
+"I am afraid, Mrs. Brenton," he was beginning as suavely as he was
+able.
+
+Katharine, however, interrupted him.
+
+"Mr. Opdyke," she demanded, with a sort of religious sternness; "have
+you ever faced disease?"
+
+"I was under the impression that I had," he answered curtly.
+
+"Looked it steadily between the eyes, I mean; sought to impress it with
+your mental dominance? Disease is a coward, we are told, a coward who
+leaves us, when it knows we feel no fear of it. If you just once would
+assert your manliness, not lie there, supine, and--"
+
+"Mr. Hopdyke," Ramsdell's voice said from the threshold; "Doctor
+Keltridge is downstairs, and is very anxious to see you about something
+most important. What shall I tell 'im?"
+
+Reed, his temples throbbing now in good earnest, smothered a _Thank
+God_, and turned to smile at Ramsdell. Ramsdell met the smile with
+impenetrable gravity. None the less, a look in the tail of his eye set
+Opdyke wondering whether, indeed, the message from the doctor was quite
+the accident it seemed.
+
+"Send him up, of course, Ramsdell. Doctor Keltridge is too busy a man
+to be kept waiting," he said briefly.
+
+To his extreme surprise, Katharine took the hint and rose.
+
+"And I must go, Mr. Opdyke. It has been such a pleasant time for me,
+this little talk with you. Some day, perhaps you will let me come
+again. Meanwhile, you really will be thinking over some of the things
+I've said?"
+
+"Very likely," Reed answered rather shortly, as once more the hoptoad
+of a hand rested unpleasantly close to his shoulder. "It's not a thing
+one is likely to forget."
+
+"I am so glad. How do you do, Doctor Keltridge?" she added archly. "You
+find me here, invading your province. I do hope you won't be too
+angry." And, with a nod to Reed, she rustled from the room.
+
+It was plain, however, that the doctor was angry, very, very angry.
+With a gesture of complete disgust, he thrust aside the chair in which
+she had been sitting, drew up another and, seating himself, rested his
+long fingers on Opdyke's wrist, while his keen eyes searched the face,
+more flushed now than he had ever seen it, the veins about the temples
+filled to bursting and pounding madly, the wavy hair above them
+clinging tightly to the brow. As long as the rustling skirts were
+audible, the doctor sat there, silent, his face blackening more with
+every second. When at last the front-door screen had clicked behind
+her, he spoke.
+
+"Boy, I'd have given a thousand dollars to have prevented this. That
+damned woman has been enough to put you back a dozen months. Yes, yes.
+I know she is a fool; but I also know that your nerves aren't in any
+state to stand her infernal diatribes. Been telling you it rested with
+you alone to choose the psychological moment for going out to walk,
+with your bed strapped on your back? Yes; I know, I tell you. No use
+for you to deny. No sense, either, for that matter. You owe the woman
+nothing; and, by thunder," he let go the wrist and gently laid his hand
+on Opdyke's throbbing head; "she is going to owe you a good deal. If
+she had kept on much longer, you'd have been a case for a hypodermic,
+perhaps worse. How the devil did she get up here, Ramsdell?"
+
+Ramsdell, from the foot of the couch, was watching Opdyke with the
+dumb, anxious entreaty of a faithful dog.
+
+"Really, I couldn't 'elp it, sir. Mr. Hopdyke 'ad sent me of an errand.
+When I got back, why, 'ere she was, a-going it as bad as any
+suffragette." Ramsdell checked himself abruptly, and gave a discreet
+little cough. Then, warned by something in the doctor's face that he
+could proceed with perfect safety, he went on once more. "As I came hup
+the stairs, I 'eard 'er telling Mr. Hopdyke that he must harise and
+leave 'is disease be'ind 'im; and hit seemed to me, sir, I'd best
+telephone to you, for fear he'd be doing a thing so rash, and 'urt
+'imself for ever. I trust," he now addressed himself to Opdyke; "trust
+there was no liberty taken, sir."
+
+Reed laughed, despite the fact that the encounter with Mrs. Brenton's
+new theology had left him feeling most ignobly weak.
+
+"So that was it? Ramsdell, you're a wily fox. I'll see you don't regret
+it. And don't worry. I'm all right, and I promise you I won't try any
+gymnastics till the doctor gives me leave." Then, Ramsdell gone, he
+turned to the doctor in a sudden wave of self-surrender which the older
+man found exceeding pitiful. "Doctor, am I a futile sort of chap, or am
+I slowly going off my head? The woman talked the most utter rubbish; I
+know it's total rot. And yet--Doctor," and the brown eyes looked up
+into the keen eyes above them with an appeal before which the keen eyes
+veiled themselves. "Doctor," Reed added a bit unsteadily; "I thought I
+had succeeded in getting a firm grip on myself once for all; and
+now--it's gone."
+
+In the end, it was a case for hypodermics, that night, the first time
+for almost a year. The doctor stayed with Reed till time for dinner;
+then, with an absolute casualness, he invited Mrs. Opdyke to let him
+stay and dine with her and the professor. Downstairs, his talk was
+cheery, careless; no one, seeing the doctor for the first time, would
+have suspected that anything was on his mind. The professor, though,
+knew his old friend better, yet he forebore to put a question. He knew
+that, when Doctor Keltridge was quite ready, he was wont to speak; but
+not before.
+
+Doctor Keltridge's cigar, smoked in Reed's room, lasted long, that
+night; above it, the doctor was silent, indolent, and yet alert to
+every change in the face before him. At nine o'clock, he rose, dived
+into his breast pocket and pulled out a little case. An instant later,
+he had bent above the couch.
+
+"Now, Ramsdell," he said cheerily, when he had once more tucked the rug
+in about Opdyke's arm; "you'd better get this fellow into bed at once.
+If he isn't sound asleep, inside an hour, you'll know what to do. A
+good night to you, boy, and many thanks for your educated taste in
+tobacco. Whatever you do, never allow your supplies to run low, or
+you'll straightway lose a good half of your social pull. Good night."
+And, with a nod to Ramsdell, he was gone.
+
+Opdyke was not asleep within an hour. Moreover, although Ramsdell did
+know what to do, and did it, the stroke of midnight found him still
+staring at the dark with burning eyes, while the pillowcase underneath
+his head hissed faintly to the steady throbbing of his temples. The
+noxious, deadly poison of Mrs. Brenton's talk had made its insidious
+way through and through his system, loosening its carefully maintained
+tensions, overthrowing its balances, stirring up all the old, forgotten
+dregs of rebellious restlessness and turning them into his blood. It
+mattered nothing that Reed Opdyke recognized the fact that it was
+poison, mattered nothing that he despised it and fought against it with
+every antidote within his reach. The harm was done; it would take long
+and long to undo it, to bring him back to his old mental health once
+more.
+
+Across the darkness, his life seemed to him to be marching,
+pageant-wise, a series of separated scenes. They started, according to
+his idea, in the faint shaft of light that crept in to him through
+Ramsdell's keyhole--for, despite all orders, the faithful fellow had
+flatly refused to put himself into bed until Opdyke himself should be
+snoring. They started, each one of them, in the narrow thread of light;
+they marched slowly across the blackness of the ceiling above his head,
+and then they ranged themselves along the opposite wall, and lurked
+there in the shadow, leering at him. In each one of them, moreover, he
+held the very centre of the stage.
+
+He saw himself a student, loitering about the elm-arched campus,
+lounging above a table in the smoke-thick air of Mory's, sitting in
+Professor Mansfield's study and gravely discussing with him the
+possibilities included in Scott Brenton. He saw himself in his
+professional school, star of his class, pampered godling of his mates.
+He saw himself, his fists in his pockets and his nose to the tanging
+breeze, striding along the Colorado mountain sides, saw himself,
+lightly poised on any sort of a contrivance that could swing from a
+rope's end, going down into the darkness of the mine. Then he saw
+himself--and, as he looked, his eyes were steady--scrambling over the
+heaps of wreckage towards the stark form beyond.
+
+And then he saw himself the centre of a group of white-coated surgeons,
+with Ramsdell's face beside him, Ramsdell's curiously gentle arm around
+his shoulders. He saw himself, again with Ramsdell, this time at home,
+and with the stanch old doctor at his other side. And then, all at
+once, the other figures faded, and he saw himself alone with Olive; saw
+Olive, daintily alive and eager, saw her merry mask of teasing fun
+which never really covered the pitiful comprehension underneath; saw
+himself, still, helpless, a wretched compromise between death and life,
+answering her nonsense with laughing lips, but with eyes which, however
+brave, yet were full of an insistent appeal for something that she
+alone could give him. And Olive was not slow of understanding. Oh,
+God--
+
+He flung his arm, the arm scarred with the fresh pricks of the useless
+hypodermic needle, across his burning eyes, his throbbing temples,
+before he finished out his phrase. Oh, God have mercy! What had he,
+albeit dumbly, allowed himself to ask of Olive? What right had he,
+henceforward, to call himself a man, or honourable, or brave, or
+anything else but an insufferably selfish cad, that he had ever once
+allowed one such instant of supine appeal to scar the surface of their
+perfect friendship? A girl like Olive was not for such a man as he
+was--now. Once, it might have been; but, at that time, it had not
+occurred to him to think about it. In the fulness of his powers, he had
+had scant time for women. Now, in his utter weakness--And Olive--
+
+The thread of light became a sudden flood. His hot, wet eyes shrank
+from the dazzle.
+
+"Did you speak, sir?" Ramsdell inquired, from the nearer threshold.
+
+Some sudden instinct of weakness made Opdyke long for the touch of any
+firm and friendly hand.
+
+"No, you old owl," he answered. "Still, now you are here, do you mind
+trying to straighten me out a little? Thanks. That's very good. Now go
+to bed. I think I am beginning to feel sleepy."
+
+Ramsdell obediently vanished; and Opdyke, shutting his teeth upon his
+mental agonies, lay silent and as if turned to stone. With a supreme
+effort at self-control, he drove the pictures from the shadowy wall; he
+banished Olive from his mind. Instead, he forced himself to think of
+Whittenden, of the charge that Whittenden had laid on him concerning
+Brenton. It had seemed a bit unfair at the time; now, looking backward,
+Opdyke could see that, as usual, Whittenden had been wise.
+Responsibilities, such as that one, would be very steadying. The need
+of holding the next man fast would tighten his grip upon himself. After
+all, it was grip he needed; else, he would be a futile frazzle of
+humanity, like Prather.
+
+With an inconsequential snap, poor Reed's brain was off again, and on a
+fresh and open stretch of road. Then suddenly it came against another
+obstacle. Only the very afternoon before, Prather had broken off his
+babble to advise a wife, as spiritual plaster for all of this world's
+woe. A wife! And for him! That any man in his position and with his
+outlook could harbour for an instant an idea so selfish! And even
+Olive--
+
+However, this time, Ramsdell did not hear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
+
+
+Doctor Keltridge smoked for a while in silence. Then,--
+
+"Opdyke is hunting for a new assistant," he said.
+
+Brenton, who had been sitting with his eyes fastened to the rug before
+him, looked up at the doctor. Looking, his gray eyes were heavy, their
+light temporarily extinct. Indeed, the old doctor, watching him
+intently from above his pipe, wondered a little if that light would
+ever come again. He was quite well aware that it burns only in eyes
+bent hopefully upon a remote, receding, yet conquerable ideal. Once
+extinguished, it is well-nigh impossible to kindle it again.
+
+"What is that for?" Brenton queried, with the utter listlessness of a
+man whose sole absorption is in himself.
+
+"A variety of reasons, I suspect. To be sure, he himself only declares
+one: the insistent professional calls on his time from outside: books,
+magazine articles, lectures, and all that. It is wonderfully good for
+the college to have a man of his calibre on its list. As a trustee, it
+is my notion that they'd much better give him anything he happens to
+want, for fear, if they refuse, he'll go out altogether."
+
+"He wouldn't," Brenton said quickly.
+
+"You never know, in a case like that of Opdyke. He has done grand work;
+his record here is made and done with. He has outside calls enough to
+fill up his time to the limit of his strength; he has enough money to
+carry him in comparative luxury to the end of all things, even if he
+never--"
+
+"Professor Opdyke is no pot-boiler," Brenton interrupted. "It's not
+money that he counts; it's the thing itself he's after."
+
+"What thing?" the doctor asked, with seeming carelessness.
+
+Brenton flashed into sudden fire.
+
+"The finishing out his work. The trying to add one little bit to the
+sum total of permanent knowledge. The kind of thing you do yourself,
+doctor, once your patients give you time to get away from the trail of
+their beastly aches and pains."
+
+The doctor eyed his companion with a sort of grim amusement.
+
+"That last phrase sounds suspicious, Brenton," he remarked. "Are you
+also--"
+
+Brenton did not wait for him to finish out the question.
+
+"No; I am not," he snapped, with a testiness that would have been a
+healthy mental symptom, had it not betrayed the fact that his nerves
+were dangerously on edge.
+
+The doctor, still watching him from above his pipe, judged it would be
+well to change the subject.
+
+"Besides," he added casually; "I fancy that Reed may be an entering
+factor."
+
+"Reed?"
+
+"Yes, with his father. The suspense is telling on them all, telling
+badly on the professor. From the point of view of the family physician,
+I believe it is any amount worse than accepting even a surety of the
+worst."
+
+"What do you call the worst?" Brenton asked flatly.
+
+"That Reed would have to lie there on his back, till the remotest end
+of time."
+
+For an instant, the old light flared up in Brenton's eyes. Rising, with
+a backward thrust of his chair that sent it crashing against a table,
+he tramped the length of the room and back again.
+
+"God help him!" he said, low. "You think that such a thing is
+possible?"
+
+The doctor nodded curtly. He loved Reed as he would have loved a son of
+his own, and it hurt him to put into words even the possibility.
+
+"It is in the limits of the possible," he answered.
+
+Again the tramp across the floor and back again. Then Brenton burst out
+fiercely.
+
+"And I can sit here and whimper about my fate, that I am the square peg
+in the round hole, while he--Doctor Keltridge, you don't mean it has
+come to that?"
+
+"Not yet. I only said, what we all must know, that it is on the cards.
+No one can tell whether they will turn up, or down. Of course, the fact
+that the rallying comes so slowly is bound to make us fear that the
+injury was worse than we thought at first. On the other hand, it is
+almost out of the question to judge it with any accuracy. Do what we
+will, we can't get inside Reed's body, and see for ourselves just what
+reactions, if any, are going on in there. I wonder, Brenton," the
+doctor faced him steadily; "if ever it has occurred to you that, in the
+last analysis, pure science is often baffled by the personal equation
+which comes into it, which defies all analysis, and which upsets the
+whole of our calculations. If it were not for the fact that Reed's ego
+is his own property, not ours, we could have settled this point about
+his future, months on months ago. Beyond a certain limit, though, there
+is no way for us to tell how far he responds to our experimental
+treatment. If his muscles do twitch, well and good. If they almost
+twitch and don't, no mortal mind outside of his can reckon how wide the
+falling short has been. You can talk about pure, abstract, impersonal
+science, till the moon turns to an Edam cheese. You can no more grasp
+the initial fact of what that science really is, than you can follow
+the example of the athletic cow. There's always the distorting lens of
+one's own mind to be taken into consideration; quite often there's
+another fellow's: the eye-piece of the compound microscope, and the
+objective. Take them away, and what impression do you get?" The doctor
+pulled himself abruptly out of his harangue. "You can't get any
+science, without the muddling addition of an ego, Brenton; and,
+moreover, there's a tentacle or two of every ego that sticks out beyond
+the edges of the law, and demands a separate code for its own
+management. It is in framing that separate code that we all fall down."
+
+But, to his regret, Brenton was deaf to his harangue.
+
+"You think," he was repeating; "that it may end in that?"
+
+The doctor ruffled his hair until it stood on end, rampant and tousled
+as a corn-husk mat.
+
+"Good Lord, man! A doctor doesn't think things," he said, with sudden
+ire. "Moreover, if he did, he wouldn't say them out. Else, where would
+his patients be? You can frighten any man to death, by offering him a
+premature glimpse into the next decade. One day at a time is enough for
+most of us; more than some of us can manage. As for Reed, it is
+impossible to testify at present; in the end, I fancy, he will be the
+chief witness for the defence. Meanwhile, he's game. You don't find
+him maundering supinely about his latter end. No! Do sit down. That
+wasn't a back-hander, aimed at you, Brenton. I hit straight, or not at
+all. I wish I could give you a tonic that would take away a little of
+your blamed self-sensitiveness, if I can coin the term. You're as
+unselfish as the rest of them, until you get hold of a bit of
+impersonal slander. Then you seize it in your arms, and hold it on your
+mental stomach like a mustard plaster. It doesn't do any good, though.
+It hurts like thunder in the time of it, and it plays the deuce with
+your later digestion."
+
+Obediently Brenton sat down; or, to speak more accurately, was borne
+down by the weight of the doctor's energetic denunciation. It was the
+first time that he had found the doctor in such a mood as that.
+Mercifully, Brenton had no inkling that he had brought it on himself by
+his prelude to the talk. It would have shocked him unspeakably, had it
+dawned upon him that Doctor Keltridge, within himself, was applying
+profane adjectives to the spiritual doubtings of his rector. It would
+have astounded him beyond all words, had he known how trivial to the
+doctor's seasoned mind had seemed his own juggling touch upon the rival
+claims of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Had Brenton held within himself
+one tenth of Reed Opdyke's staying power, all would have come out right
+in the end. The pieces of the puzzle would have fallen into their true
+places. Instead, Scott Brenton, in his impatience, was apparently
+determined to chop the pieces into smaller bits, and then to deface
+their surfaces almost past recognition. Therefore it had seemed to
+Doctor Keltridge the one way of escape from the whole pother had been
+opened by his words, which he now repeated with a fresh emphasis that
+he hoped would finally impress them upon Scott Brenton's ear.
+
+"Yes; and so, with all this complication on his hands, the professor is
+hunting for a new assistant."
+
+This time, Brenton looked at him keenly.
+
+"Are you telling that fact to me, for any especial reason, doctor?" he
+demanded.
+
+"Yes, to my shame, I am. By good rights, Brenton, I ought to order you
+into a sanatorium, until you get over the desire to make an idiot of
+yourself. I doubt, though, if it would do any good. I fancy that your
+case is chronic, that you won't be happy till you've muddled your
+intellectual salvation according to your own notions. If that's the
+fact, the sooner you go about it, the better. Your hanging on at Saint
+Peter's is only so much wear and tear upon your nerves. Ours, too, when
+it comes to that. One doesn't get much sanctification out of a sermon
+couched in glittering generalities and delivered by a rector with a
+crumpled brow. Therefore the trustee of the college has told tales to
+the doctor, and the doctor is hinting the gist of those tales to his
+patient."
+
+"Do you think I'd fill the place?" Brenton's voice surprised himself by
+its unwonted quivering of eagerness.
+
+"Depends on whether you get the chance," the doctor parried. "Moreover,
+your getting the chance depends on what you think about your taking it.
+There's another man talked about for the position; but I have a good
+deal of say in the matter, and Opdyke has more. He considers you rather
+a genius in his line, a wasted genius, and would jump at a chance to
+have you put in under him as instructor. What do you think?"
+
+Brenton's reply came without an instant's hesitation.
+
+"I will take it, if it's offered me."
+
+"You know it will shut Saint Peter's door to you for ever? In a case
+like this, one can't go back again."
+
+"I know," Brenton made brief assent.
+
+"You realize all you are giving up?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"You know the world is full of potential Prathers; and you also know
+what your wife will say? Does she understand what you have been going
+through?"
+
+Brenton's lips stiffened.
+
+"I have not meant to keep anything back from her. How far she has
+grasped all it has meant to me--However, in honour, I have done my
+best."
+
+And, despite the weakening drop of his voice on the final phrases, the
+doctor believed him. Believing and likewise knowing Katharine, he
+pitied Brenton from the bottom of his heart. After all, was the fellow
+quite so invertebrate as he had sometimes seemed?
+
+"Well, I will talk to Opdyke first, and then bring the matter up before
+the rest of the trustees. There's a meeting, early in October. Best not
+do anything until that is over. Then, in all decency, you will have to
+give a little time to Saint Peter's. You can't well bolt off, like a
+cook in a tantrum. Prepare their Christmas diet for them; and then go
+into this other thing, directly after mid-years."
+
+"But, feeling as I do, have I any right to keep on at Saint Peter's?"
+Brenton queried.
+
+The doctor cut his query short.
+
+"Business is business, no matter how you feel. That curate of yours is
+as futile as a Persian pussy in a ten-horse plough. It takes a little
+time to pick up the right sort of a new man for a church like this; you
+have no right to leave the whole plant at loose ends, while they are
+about it, just because your ego has a pain in its psychological
+digestion. People have got to go on being married and buried, even if
+you can't make a scientific assay of the doctrine of the Atonement.
+Well," the doctor rose and emptied out his long-cold pipe; "that's all.
+I wish you luck, Brenton, and I'll help you all I can. Whatever I think
+about your mental calibre, I do believe that you are honest; and, after
+all, that's the main thing we all are trying for. Now go along, and
+talk this matter over with your wife. By the way, how is the baby?"
+
+"A little droopy still. It's not too easy to bring him out of it, as
+long as I can only give him your stuff on the sly, when Mrs. Brenton is
+out of the room." Brenton cast a hasty glance at his watch. "It's time
+he had it now. I must be going," he said hurriedly, and, an instant
+later, he had bolted from the room.
+
+The doctor listened for the closing of the door. Then his face lost a
+little of its keenness, and he sighed.
+
+"It must be the very devil and all to have a conscience," he remarked
+at the four walls around him. "Thank God for one thing: I'm immune."
+
+Filling himself a fresh pipe, he sat himself down to its enjoyment.
+Half way through it, he spoke once more.
+
+"That woman would beat the Devil in a game of poker, if she could get
+the immortal souls of men by way of chips."
+
+But the only immortal soul in Katharine's hands just now was the one
+inside her baby boy, a flimsy, fragile little chip upon the tides of
+time. However, it would not be Katharine's fault, if time were not soon
+exchanged for eternity.
+
+Not that Katharine abused the child, though; not that she exactly
+neglected it. She chose its clothing and food with a proper degree of
+care; she consulted more than one efficient matron of Saint Peter's
+congregation, before she accepted the references of the nurse. That
+done, she left the child's routine chiefly to the nurse; to the nurse
+exclusively she left all the more tender ministrations to the little,
+dawning personality. Upon one point, however, she stood firm. When the
+child was ailing, it should be brought at once to her for succour. It
+should be healed by the power of her mind, not poisoned by the nostrums
+of a man like Doctor Keltridge, good as gold, but slavish in his
+adherence to the foolish old traditions.
+
+Therefore it came about that, when the cruel dog days fell upon the
+town, when baby after baby became a victim to their scourge until at
+last it was the Brenton baby's turn, then Katharine suddenly discovered
+that mind was a poor weapon against incipient dysentery. She fought the
+disease most valiantly; she even stayed at home for two entire days,
+holding the baby in one arm, a fat black volume in the other hand,
+reading and pondering by turns. Being human and feminine and, by this
+time, a little tired, it is not to be wondered at that occasionally her
+mind wandered a little from the child to the best amount of starch for
+muslin frocks. Still, as a whole, she held herself fairly steady; and,
+by the end of the third day, she was rejoiced to find the child was on
+the gain. Openly and aloud, she proceeded to give testimony as
+concerned this test case. To Brenton she talked of it incessantly, in
+the hope of assisting his conversion to her standards. Unhappily,
+Brenton, after talking with Doctor Keltridge, and heavily bribing the
+nurse to hold her tongue, knew more about the causes of the cure than
+Katharine did, and hence his conversion was not greatly expedited by
+it.
+
+It was a good ten days afterward, a good week after his talk with
+Doctor Keltridge, that Brenton dropped in at the Keltridges', one
+morning, to make his report upon the child. It was the ending of the
+office hour; three or four patients still were awaiting their turns for
+consultation. Accordingly, Olive, meeting Brenton on the steps, took
+him to the library to wait.
+
+"No use your going in there to sit with all the other germs," she told
+him lightly, as she removed her hat pins and took off her hat. "Come in
+here, and tell me how the boy is getting on. Better, I hope."
+
+"Yes, better. Still, it is slow to get him up again. Babies are such
+frail little things; a breath can send them up or down. Of course, I am
+very anxious."
+
+Olive took swift note of the singular number of the pronoun; its very
+unconsciousness made it the more ominous. It was really that which
+framed her answer.
+
+"Yes; but you have a treasure of a nurse. Mrs. Prather tells me that
+she is a host in herself."
+
+As Olive spoke, she flattered herself that she had bridged the chasm
+successfully. A glance at Brenton, though, assured her that he had been
+momentarily aware of the existence of the chasm. Hastily she changed
+the subject, too hastily, as it proved, to select her new theme with
+care.
+
+"My father has been telling me a little bit about your future plans,
+Mr. Brenton."
+
+"My plans?"
+
+She mistook his question utterly.
+
+"No need to worry," she said, with a sudden accent of hauteur. "Of
+course, I never should think of speaking of them to any outsider. But
+my father has a trick of talking most things over with me; we have been
+alone together for so long."
+
+"Of course. There is no reason that you shouldn't know. Besides, it
+will be an open secret soon. As soon as things are settled with the
+trustees, I shall resign."
+
+"I am very sorry," Olive said quite simply.
+
+His colour came.
+
+"It is the only honourable thing for me to do, Miss Keltridge."
+
+"I know that," she told him, with a swift return to her old
+downrightness. "And I am sorry for you, yourself. You must have
+suffered, in this whole thing, a great deal more than any of us know."
+
+For an instant, his gray eyes deepened, burned. He started to hold out
+his hand to hers; then he checked the gesture.
+
+"I have. It's not an easy thing to do, Miss Keltridge, the sliding out
+of a concrete and detailed theology into a something that at best is--"
+
+She cut off his final word.
+
+"I know. Doubting isn't so easy as most people imagine it to be. And
+you--It must have been fearful."
+
+"To have had such doubts?" he assented musingly. "Yes--"
+
+Again she cut him off, this time rather unexpectedly. Brenton was
+conscious of a momentary wonder whether her sympathy was less than she
+had led him to anticipate.
+
+"No; to have had such beliefs, in the first place. If only they had
+been a little milder, you never would have distrusted them. It's
+nothing but the rasping surface of a creed that sets the doubts to
+working."
+
+He tried to conceal a slight sense of hurt beneath his laugh at the
+concrete image called into being by her words.
+
+"Like ivy poison, when you rub it, and it spreads? Perhaps." Then
+suddenly his eyes went grave. "The curious fact about it all, Miss
+Keltridge, is that our beliefs never take half the hold on us that our
+doubts do. My inherited notions of original sin and a violent
+conversion never by any chance could have upset my worldly advancement.
+This last phase of my querying--to phrase it mildly--is going to
+overturn my--" And, for the first time in her knowledge of him, Olive
+heard his laugh ring bitter; "my whole scheme of domestic economics."
+
+Bitter as was his laugh, though, Brenton's face was only sad. To Olive,
+watching him and suddenly grown aware of his weakness, it was plain
+that life was taking it out of him rather badly, plain that the man
+before her was hungering for comprehension, comfort. What did he get of
+that sort, at home?
+
+Once again, at her own question, Olive felt the chasm widening between
+them, felt it and instinctively detested it. Still, she could not keep
+her mind from lingering an instant on the wonder whether, if Brenton's
+wife had been sensitive, unselfish, alert to supply, in so far as lay
+within her, the sympathy of which he plainly was in need, the present
+crisis ever would have dawned. She doubted. If ever there had been a
+case where a wife had muddled things by her total lack of
+comprehension, here it was. A blind intolerance would have been nothing
+by comparison.
+
+Suddenly she threw back her shoulders and lifted up her head. It was
+morally and socially impossible to be heaping all the blame, even of a
+mental crisis, on the wife. She, as a woman, owed the other woman more
+sufferance than that. And Brenton was disappointingly weak. No strong
+man would have fallen down in such a muddle, by reason of a tempest in
+his spiritual teapot. Besides, if he had steadied to his strain, he
+might perhaps have held his wife also steady, might even have prevented
+her allegiance to her new creed. Olive's innate sense of justice
+demanded division of the blame.
+
+Yet, as the girl pronounced her judgments on both Brenton and his wife,
+she was conscious of an immense wave of pity which spent itself
+entirely upon Brenton. Brenton was weak, was futile, disappointing;
+nevertheless, it was plain that he was suffering keenly. And, just
+because the nature of his suffering was so alien to all her own life's
+standards, it impressed itself on Olive as the grim, silent endurance
+of Reed Opdyke had never done. Reed was Reed, a solid fact past all
+gainsaying; his point of view had become one of the necessities of her
+daily life. Always she could predict with just how great a degree of
+manliness he would bear himself. As for Brenton--
+
+To her extreme surprise, Olive's mind stopped short, and refused to
+continue the comparison.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
+
+
+The curate, after the manner of his kind, was having tea with a
+feminine member of his congregation. This time, the honour had fallen
+upon Olive, who had received it with temperate resignation rather than
+exuberant joy. Divested of his bunny hood, the curate was a weedy young
+man with painfully good intentions and a receding chin. Furthermore, he
+confessed to liking caraway seed in his tea cakes. In other words, the
+trail of his nursery was still upon him. Accordingly, to atone for the
+skim-milk quality of his conversation, Olive habitually refused him
+cream in his tea, and squeezed in lemon juice until he cried aloud for
+mercy.
+
+On this particular afternoon, quite as a matter of course, the talk had
+turned on Brenton. Indeed, it seemed to Olive, nowadays, that the talk
+invariably did turn on Brenton. All summer long, his matrimonial
+incongruities, to use no stronger term for the domestic ecclesiastical
+situation, had furnished talk for half the tea tables in town.
+Moreover, it was only when a man was present that any woman lifted up
+her voice in Katharine's defence. Left to themselves, they knew
+perfectly well that all the scholarly stoops and resonant voices and
+luminous gray eyes in all creation were not responsible for their
+universal sympathy for Brenton. The woman was a toad, a selfish and
+ambitious toad, hopping, hopping, hopping up across the surface of the
+human pyramid before her. However, in the presence of an occasional
+tea-drinking husband, one or the other of them embraced convention and
+talked feelingly of Mrs. Brenton's virtues. As a rule, though, she
+confessed to herself later on that she had been insistently harping
+upon a non-existent entity.
+
+Of late, though, a new element had crept into the talk. Without a
+definite word of any sort having been spoken, there was a widening
+circle of belief that Brenton's days at Saint Peter's were coming to an
+end; that he had stumbled over some obstacle in his professional
+pathway; in short, that he had come an ecclesiastical cropper. Just the
+form taken by that cropper, just when his relations with Saint Peter's
+would cease, just why and wherefore, just what would be the next page
+of Brenton's history: all this was still an enigma past all finding
+out. For that very reason, it added untold zest to all the cups of tea.
+Indeed, it had quite ousted the subject of Reed Opdyke from the public
+mind. Reed, in his own time, had been the one great theme. As the
+months ran on, though, he presented very little variety to the general
+eye, and one's subject must show variety at any cost. Therefore Opdyke
+was abandoned, and Brenton substituted in his place.
+
+Questioned, Olive would have found it hard to tell why the inveterate
+harping upon Brenton vexed her so. She had been frankly irate, earlier,
+when the talk had turned on Opdyke; more than once, she had freed her
+mind and departed on her heels. However, that had been very different;
+very, very different. Opdyke was an individual; his predicament was a
+purely personal matter, concerning himself alone. He did not talk of
+it, himself. Therefore it seemed to Olive that there was no especial
+reason that all the women in town, some of them total strangers, should
+be babbling unceasingly about it, with every degree of curiosity and of
+mawkish sentiment.
+
+But Brenton, partly by virtue of his position in the public eye, partly
+by reason of something in his make-up which led him to clamour forth
+his intellectual hardships to any sympathetic ear that offered; by that
+same token, Brenton seemed to the girl to be the more in need of calm
+protection. Reed, shut away from all the clamour, was powerless to
+defend himself. Brenton, timing his steps to the rhythm of the chorus,
+even giving an occasional metronomic signal to that chorus, was equally
+powerless to suppress it. The fact that the lack of power was in
+himself, not in circumstance: this only made it the more piteous. And
+Olive, listening, did pity Brenton, pity him increasingly, albeit with
+the pity which is not at all akin to love. It was not his own fault
+entirely that his virile strength was crossed by the wavering, widening
+line of weakness that kept him from shutting his teeth upon the results
+of his spiritual manoeuvres; not his own fault that his analytic logic
+was a long way sounder than his common sense.
+
+"Two lumps, Mr. Ross?" Olive queried, over the second cup of tea. She
+knew quite well that the question would stamp her once and for all as a
+careless hostess. Nevertheless, she asked it, as her only means of
+deflecting the talk from Brenton.
+
+The curate gave a soft and patient sigh.
+
+"No sugar, Miss Keltridge," he corrected her gently; "and, if you don't
+mind, please not quite so much lemon. There!" He lifted his hand
+appealingly.
+
+But Olive, smiling brightly back at him, gave the uncut half of lemon
+another squeeze in her strong and supple fingers.
+
+"Oh, but you will learn to like it in time, Mr. Ross. Then you will
+wonder how you even tolerated it in any other way."
+
+"I dare say," the curate murmured meekly, as he took the cup.
+
+"Indeed, I know," Olive assured him easily. "When I was young, I used
+to take it with all sorts of cream in it; but now--" She shook her
+head. Then she added suavely, "You are sure it is quite all right, Mr.
+Ross?"
+
+The curate took a courteous taste. Then he strangled a little, not so
+much, though, at the tea as at the coming falsehood.
+
+"Oh, very!" he said politely, and then he took to stirring his tea with
+suspicious fervour.
+
+"How strange it always seems to have the town fill up again!" Olive
+observed, still determined to keep the talk away from Brenton. "And
+yet, we miss the girls, when they are gone."
+
+"We miss them at the church," the curate answered with unexpected
+energy. "They increase the offertory at least twenty-five per cent, and
+they keep the choir boys from flatting on their upper notes. I had
+never seen a girls' college, till I came here; but I can't help
+thinking it has its own disadvantages. I like them in the aggregate,
+Miss Keltridge; but I can't seem to get on with them individually. They
+are so distressingly young. I leave all that to Mr. Brenton."
+
+"He has been most successful," Olive assented tamely.
+
+"Yes. He has a way with women, as they say; he manages them by the
+ears. At least--I mean--" The curate, confounded by the hideous mental
+picture that he had evoked, was floundering helplessly.
+
+"Exactly," Olive assented once more.
+
+The curate rallied.
+
+"And yet, they all adore him," he concluded. "That is the strange thing
+about Mr. Brenton, Miss Keltridge. He manages most women grandly," the
+curate, sure that he had retrieved his error, in his self-gratulation
+promptly slipped into a second one; "but that suffragette wife of
+his--"
+
+"Mrs. Brenton is not a suffragette," Olive interposed hurriedly.
+
+"No? Well, she might as well be. She's Christian Scientist, and that is
+only the next thing to it. Besides, she is terribly masterful, is Mrs.
+Brenton. Take the case of the baby, for instance: no matter what
+happens to be the trouble with the little one, Mrs. Brenton won't allow
+a grain of calomel inside the house. I call it--"
+
+"Olive!" It was the voice of the doctor, speaking from the threshold;
+and the voice was weighted with anxiety. "Can you be excused for just
+one minute?"
+
+With a little gesture of apology, Olive left her place beside the tray,
+and went in the direction of the voice. She overtook her father in his
+consulting-room, where he was pacing the floor, fists in his pockets,
+hair awry and his face singularly dark and haggard.
+
+"Olive," he said abruptly, as his daughter came in sight; "can you
+possibly send off that snippet, and go down to the Opdykes' for an
+hour?"
+
+"I suppose I can. Is anything the matter?"
+
+"Yes, and no. There's nothing new, exactly; but they all are--getting
+on their nerves. I've been down there, half the afternoon, trying to
+steady them; but it is a case where they need a woman. If you can go,
+Olive? And don't come back, until you can't do another thing for any of
+them. No matter if it does take it out of you; I can patch you up
+again, all right. And they all want you. Mrs. Opdyke asked if you would
+come." The doctor came to a full halt, his face very red, his eyes
+suffused, and fell to rubbing both hands through and through his hair.
+
+Olive waited a full minute before she spoke. When she did speak, her
+clear young voice was steady and authoritative.
+
+"Father, what is it? Something must be very wrong. Is Reed--worse?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then what is it?"
+
+The doctor's face grew redder still. Then, of a sudden, the words flew
+from him in a great gulp of woe.
+
+"He told me, early this afternoon, what he claims to have known surely
+for a long, long time: that there is no chance for him to gain; that
+the lower part of his body is absolutely dead; that all our treatment,
+all our experimenting on it has not affected it at all; that, till the
+day he dies, he's bound to stay there just as you see him now, half of
+him perfectly well, half of him a senseless log."
+
+Olive whitened, whitened. There came a faint blue line about her mouth,
+and her eyes glittered, hot and dry. Nevertheless,--
+
+"You believe it?" she asked steadily.
+
+"I didn't, at the first. In the end, he made me."
+
+The white changed into gray, and the blue line widened.
+
+"I'll go at once," she said briefly. "Please tell Mr. Ross I have been
+called out on an important errand."
+
+For Olive Keltridge would not flinch, even in this present crisis. If
+Reed was in this final, consummating agony, and needed her, it was for
+her to go.
+
+Five minutes later, the curate safely shunted to the front door and
+through it, the doctor came back again to Olive, a wine glass in his
+hand. She told him with a gesture that she preferred to be without it.
+
+"You needn't worry," she said quietly, as she settled her hat and gave
+a touch or two to her crisp white gown; "I promise you I won't disgrace
+you. I shall go through it better, if I rely just on my nerves, not on
+a stimulant."
+
+"But it is going to be a bad half-hour for you, Olive."
+
+"Do you suppose I don't know that? Reed and I have been chums since I
+was three years old; I don't want to watch--"
+
+But the doctor interrupted.
+
+"It isn't Reed you'll have to watch. He will be watching you, trying to
+let you down as easily as he can. It's like the boy to take in the fact
+that this thing isn't going to be altogether easy for a few of us
+others to accept. As far as he is concerned, he's very quiet; his main
+anxiety appears to be for the effect of the shock on other people. You
+won't have any scene with Reed; he'll look out for that. It's his
+father and mother who are the present problem."
+
+"They are--" Olive hesitated for a word.
+
+"The professor is crushed, stunned. It never once has seemed to cross
+his mind that this thing could be final; and now the fact has knocked
+him over. As for Mrs. Opdyke, I worry less. She has lost all grip on
+herself and is hysterical, with Ramsdell in attendance till I can send
+somebody in. That leaves Reed alone, to hear the echoes of the general
+unsettlement, and to think them over. Damn it all, Olive! It's bad
+enough to be knocked out, in the first place; but it's a long way worse
+to be out of it and to know that you are being wailed over. Mrs. Opdyke
+is having a veritable wake. For heaven's sake, hurry down there and see
+if you can't help Ramsdell to steady her down. If you can't, then let
+her wake it out to her heart's content, and you go up and talk to Reed.
+Else, he'll go mad."
+
+And Olive went.
+
+As the doctor had foretold, she found the house in psychological chaos.
+In the library, the professor sat alone beside his desk. Of a sudden,
+he had turned to the likeness of an old, old man, shrunken and bowed
+with a grief which, taking his vitality drop by drop, had left him in
+this present, final crisis, inert, passive, apathetic. He greeted Olive
+listlessly, answered a question so vaguely as to warn her that any
+effort on her part to rouse him would be worse than useless, worse
+because it would change his apathy into renewed despair. For a few
+minutes, the girl stood beside him, watching him silently, realizing
+that the shock had been so sudden that it had taken away the power to
+feel. Like a man knocked out in battle, he only had a dim realization
+that he had been shot down, pierced in some vital part. It would take
+him a long time to become aware of just the nature of his injury.
+
+In the next room, Ramsdell was busy with Mrs. Opdyke, very busy, as
+Olive saw, once she crossed the threshold. She also saw that Ramsdell
+was as gentle as a woman in the crisis, as gentle and infinitely more
+strong. There was really nothing for her to do, nothing that Ramsdell,
+trained for such emergencies, could not do far, far better. And the
+hysterical sobbing, the moans of the mother's anguish, could be plainly
+heard through all the silent house. Olive pitied Mrs. Opdyke most
+intensely; but she was conscious of a sudden longing to administer a
+restorative box on the ear. It was unthinkable, to her young, elastic
+strength, that any one could be so weak as to throw over self-control
+completely; unthinkable that any mother could become so strident in her
+selfish agony of pity for her stricken son, when she could so much
+better be holding herself and him quite steady by her brave acceptance
+of untoward fortune. But then, Mrs. Opdyke was an older woman, and of
+more feminine mould. Besides, she had had an eighteen-month-long
+strain, and, moreover, she was Reed's mother, while she herself, Olive,
+was nothing but a rank outsider, and consequently callous. She did her
+best to dismiss her longing to smite the wailing Mrs. Opdyke; but the
+blue ring once more settled about her lips, as she went slowly up the
+stairs.
+
+In Reed's room everything was curiously unchanged, curiously unlike the
+spiritual chaos below stairs. The September sunshine came sifting in
+through the tree tops to dapple with level spots of light the silky
+surface of the rug; the soft breeze stirred the curtains and then
+passed on to ruffle the curly mop of bright brown hair that gleamed
+like polished chestnuts in the sun. After the excitement and the
+tragedy of the lower rooms, this place seemed as quiet as a sanctuary;
+and Reed's face matched the quiet, as he turned his eyes to Olive.
+
+"I suppose you know it, too," he said quite steadily. "I wanted to tell
+you, myself; but I couldn't seem to brace myself to the actual putting
+it into words. No; don't go to spilling any tears, Olive; it is too
+late for that. In fact," and then, just for a moment, the hand
+outstretched on the rug shut till the nails bit into the softness of
+the palm; "there is a certain relief in having it out and over, and all
+settled. We both of us have known we were facing the chance of it. Now
+we know the worst, and can take it as it comes."
+
+Despite the little quiver of his voice upon the final words, there was
+a curious peace in his face, the light like nothing else on land and
+sea. Olive watched it, for a minute, through the blinding, burning
+tears. Then, forgetful of her promise to her father, she flung herself
+down on her knees beside the couch, and fell to sobbing like a little
+child.
+
+She steadied herself soon, however; but not until, with a greater
+effort than she ever knew, Reed stretched out his arm to its fullest
+reach and laid his hand upon her cheek, her hair.
+
+"Yes, Olive," he said, very low. "I am glad it hurts you just a little.
+I wanted you to care."
+
+Then sharply he withdrew his hand and put it out of sight beneath the
+rug. When once more he spoke, his voice had its old resonance.
+
+"Don't take it too hard, Olive," he bade her cheerily. "I was rather a
+selfish beast not to have told you earlier, instead of letting you go
+on hoping for the unattainable. Feeling better? That's good. Of course,
+we were bound to make our moan together; we've been chums too long to
+miss that, and there's much more comfort to be taken in a duet of
+misery than in a pair of separate solos. Now just tell me once for all
+that you are infernally sorry, and we'll consider that matter settled
+for all time. Sure you're all right? There's some wine, over in that
+closet. No? Well, then I'd like to suggest that your hat is rampantly
+askew. Harrowing scenes aren't good for millinery. Yes, that's
+straight. Now do haul up a chair, and we'll proceed to talk this thing
+out to the bitter end. There's no denying that I've made a mess of life
+by my own recklessness; but apparently I've got to go on living, just
+the same. Therefore, if you don't mind, suppose we plan how I can go to
+work to pick up the pieces."
+
+And while, below stairs, Reed Opdyke's parents were prostrate in their
+sorrow, it was in this fashion that Olive Keltridge, sitting by his
+side, tried to help him to face forward steadily, and to pick up the
+useful fragments left of his broken life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
+
+
+Saint Peter's Parish was fifteen miles and a consequent half-hour of
+time from the nearest fount of Christian Science teaching. Hence it
+resulted that only rarely had Katharine been used to refresh herself in
+the tenets of her new theology. In part, this came from her natural
+self-reliance, coupled with an indolence which made her shrink from the
+needful effort to catch an early train. In part, it came out of
+Brenton's heedful planning. Regretting, as he could not fail to do, his
+wife's allegiance to a creed so alien to the shreds of his own belief,
+not daring to oppose her absolutely in its observance, he contrived to
+strew her path with the accumulated petty obstacles which are so much
+more insurmountable than any single great one. He never set back the
+hands of the clock to make her miss her train; neither did he lock her
+in her room. He merely found out at the last minute that he needed one
+of the small personal services which only a wife can give.
+
+And Katharine, by the very nature of her new and optimistic creed, was
+powerless to stand out against him. Earlier, fathoming his purposes,
+she would have raged, have burst into a passion. Now she could only
+minister to him with an impassive calm, while, in her secret heart, she
+was piously commending him to the attention of the Universal Mind for
+discipline. Unhappily for Katharine, however, the Universal Mind
+appeared to be engaged in some other direction, and Brenton, for the
+present, was left to go scot free.
+
+This had been the state of the case, ever since the early spring, and
+Katharine felt the private and personal fount of sanctity within her to
+be running dry. She was just making up her mind to break away at any
+cost, when a new complication arose in the person of the baby. Not that
+Katharine's devotion to her child would have led her to any especial
+sacrifice, however. Indeed, there was no need for that. The nurse had
+proved herself an efficient substitute in any normal crisis; and any
+abnormal one, Katharine believed, could be controlled as well by absent
+treatment as by present. Unhappily, Katharine had reckoned without
+taking into account either Brenton's wilful allegiance to the
+old-fashioned notions of disease, or the nurse's abject allegiance to
+the father of her puny charge.
+
+For, as the time ran on, no one could deny that the child was puny,
+that his birthright of health was dwindling fast. And, while it
+dwindled, the heat came on, and then the stifling dog days. It was a
+season when the lustiest of children wilted with the damp, depressing
+heat; and the Brenton baby, never lusty, wilted with them. Katharine
+treated him with conscientious regularity; but dog days and consequent
+dysentery proved too strenuous a claim for her to fight alone, and more
+and more eagerly she longed for the succour of the nearest local
+representative of the Mother Church.
+
+Nevertheless, the more she longed, the more she shrank from carrying
+into effect her longing. Three days before this time, Brenton had come
+in upon her, sitting beside the weazen child, her eyes on space, her
+lips moving in silent self-communion. Across the room, the nurse was
+sobbing into her handkerchief. Now and then, between her sobs, she
+lifted up her irate eyes to glare upon the placid face beside the
+little crib.
+
+Brenton had asked a question. Before Katharine could answer, the nurse
+had cut in and given him a few facts: hours and amounts and consequent
+symptoms which she deemed disturbing. And then, in a voice which made a
+curious contrast to the agitation of the nurse, Katharine had urged
+them to wait, quiet, until she had put the little human creature,
+suffering from some hidden sin or lack of faith, into a more total
+communion with the Infinite, the Healer; had even begged them not to
+allow their ill-concealed doubts to delay the perfect cure.
+
+The nurse, heedless of the Infinite, the Healer, had interposed with a
+few more facts; had pointed out that physical mal-nutrition can not be
+made good by a diet of compressed air, however theological that air may
+be. The baby needed, not the Infinite, but finite stimulants and
+predigested foods. It needed to be left in peace and quiet, not be
+stirred up to listen to what, in her increasing ire, the nurse termed
+mummery and flummery. As for sin, the poor baby wasn't the sinner. It
+hadn't gone and neglected its only son--
+
+In mercy, less for the logic of the nurse and the consequent feelings
+of his wife, than for his own nerves, Brenton interrupted. Like most
+men between two women, he only made the matter infinitely worse. There
+was a discussion; then there were words. Then Brenton lost his temper
+and departed on his heels, leaving his wife, the nurse, and the fretful
+baby wailing aloud in a discordant trio. As a natural result, Katharine
+forgot the needs of the child and sought the healing contact of the
+All-Mind upon her own account, while the nurse, drying her tears in
+haste, seized the child in one arm, the opportunity in the other, and
+administered the simple remedies she always kept on hand. Brenton,
+meanwhile, sought Doctor Keltridge. Half an hour later, he was back
+again, the doctor by his side.
+
+The old doctor, dragged helter-skelter from his laboratory, was in
+wildest disarray, and his eyes were still a little vague, as he
+followed Brenton up the stairs to the nursery. Across the threshold of
+the nursery, however, the vagueness vanished; the eyes grew keen as
+sharp-pointed bits of steel, yet strangely gentle, while he sat down
+beside the crib and laid one mammoth brown hand above the scrawny
+little claw. Then, for just a minute, the keen eyes narrowed to a line.
+A minute afterward, he looked up and smiled across at Brenton.
+
+"Yes, the little chap is sick, this time; it is about as well you
+called me in. It's been a bad summer for the children; he's had to take
+his turn with the rest of them, and it has pulled him down. Poor little
+youngster!" And one huge forefinger gently hooked itself into the neck
+of the little gown, drew it away and disclosed the piteous leanness of
+the throat and chest beneath, the fragile leanness of the baby bird
+just fallen from the nest. "Poor little youngster!" he repeated. "He
+has had a hard time of it in this world. Sometimes it does seem as if
+they didn't start with quite a fair chance."
+
+"Doctor," the word came with something that was very like a groan; "I
+have done my best."
+
+The doctor stopped him instantly.
+
+"Brenton, I know that. You've had a bad time, too. Don't think for a
+minute I am forgetting that, even if I don't say too much about it.
+It's extra hard, in this case, for the boy was perfectly strong, when
+he was born."
+
+"You mean--" Brenton's mouth had suddenly gone so dry that he could not
+finish out the phrase.
+
+The doctor did not falter.
+
+"Brenton, if I am to help you keep the boy, I shall have to talk to you
+brutally. The baby was born all right, healthy as a child could be,
+tough and strong enough for a dozen children. However, every baby needs
+a little nursing, needs a little dosing now and then, even if he is
+healthy. That is what your baby hasn't had. Mrs. Brenton, with the best
+will in the world, has fed him any sort of milk from any sort of cows,
+and she has counted on the Infinite to sterilize the milkman's fingers.
+And, in all probability, the Infinite didn't do it. Too busy, likely,
+in sterilizing the youngster's mind. Then, when a dose of honest castor
+oil would have made good the trouble, she gave him a dose of _Science
+and Health_, instead. It may be all right in theory; in this practical
+case, she might just as well have rolled up the inspired pages into
+pills and have poked them down the baby's throat." And then the doctor
+pulled himself up. "However, that's done with. Now, if you'll stand by
+me and see that my orders are carried out, I'll fall to work and try my
+best to undo the harm. You'll see me through, Brenton? It will keep you
+on duty steadily; but it is the one thing that will save your child."
+
+"Of course. Go on." Then Brenton shut his teeth.
+
+"Nurse, have you been able to give--" And the doctor put her through a
+searching catechism. Then, "So far, so good. I am glad you kept your
+head; it was the one chance. Now, suppose we look a little closer."
+
+To Brenton, watching intently, it seemed almost impossible that those
+great, acid-stained hands could stir, then lift, the little form so
+tenderly. Indeed, once on the doctor's knee, the baby nestled weakly to
+the curve of his rough coat sleeve, the heavy lids lifted and the
+weazen face lighted with the ghost of a tired little smile. Then the
+lids fell heavily once more; but once more, also, there was the faintly
+nestling motion of the wee, weary body against the strong, kind arm.
+And, above the little body, the doctor's face, intently bent over the
+child, was lighted with a swift reflection from the greater light of
+the All-Father, yet above.
+
+"Poor little kiddie!" he said slowly. "It's a close shave for him,
+Brenton; but, if you'll stand by and help, please God, we'll save him
+yet."
+
+And Brenton did stand by, all evening long and all the night. The nurse
+was with him, watching. Katharine, furious beneath her scientific calm,
+came and went at intervals; but the doctor's bottle and spoon were in
+the breast pocket of Brenton's clerical coat, the doctor's written
+schedule was set down in duplicate on Brenton's cuff. And Brenton, too
+tired to be really weary, never once left his chair beside the frilly
+crib.
+
+Later on, he never could remember what were his thoughts, that night.
+Being human and very wide awake, he must have thought something; but,
+ransack his mind as he would, nothing coherent ever came back to him
+out of the half-forgotten chaos. Indeed, it was as if his whole nature,
+body, mind, and spirit, were focussing itself upon one passionate
+desire that his child might live. Not that he consciously prayed. What
+was there that he could pray to, or for? Laws did not stop their
+working, to prolong one baby life. Useless to ask for mere futilities.
+Useless and totally irreverent to insult the Deity by suggesting to
+Him, however prayerfully, that He had made a bad mistake; that, were
+His attention only called to the mistake, doubtless He would be glad to
+set it right while time still remained to Him. And, if the mistake were
+not set right? If--well--if the child did--die, what then? Did that
+weazen little body, that mind as yet unopened to any but the simplest
+of sensations: did these hold within themselves the germs of conscious
+immortality? Or would the tiny flake of snow upon the desert's dusty
+waste vanish within its hour or two, be gone? The bud, cut from the
+rose, may open a bit, when placed in water; then it fades, and dies,
+and leaves no seed behind. In the same way, the budding life, cut from
+the parent stem--Who had cut it, though: God, or Katharine, or merely
+inexorable law? Brenton smothered a groan. Then, because law was
+inexorable, he cast aside his wonderings, looked at his cuff, at his
+watch, and shut his fingers upon the bottle and the spoon.
+
+As for Katharine, it would have been well-nigh impossible for any one
+outside the influence of the mysterious tenets of her scientific creed,
+to analyze all she felt, that night. Moreover, her insulted creed, had
+the truth been told, seemed to herself scarcely more to be considered
+than her insulted self. The child was her own property. She had given
+it birth; it was for her alone to dictate its experiences. It was her
+child; not in any actual sense the child of Brenton. And Brenton, too,
+was hers. Little as she might have come to love him--for by now
+Katharine had passed the epoch where she reckoned him as anything
+beyond a subject for critical analysis and consequent deploring--little
+as she might have come to love him, he was yet her husband and so, in a
+sense, her chattel. It was for her to rule them both, her husband and
+her child; she should be dominant, they humbly subject. And now, all of
+a sudden, they both of them had thrown off her dominance, the child
+unconsciously, Brenton of his full volition. Apart from any question of
+the theologic controversy, the household had cast aside her sway, had,
+in a sense and temporarily, deposed her from her domestic throne, she
+the strong one of them all. Only her stoically optimistic creed kept
+Katharine, alone in her own room, from biting at her carefully-groomed
+finger tips.
+
+And, besides, there was the question of the theologic controversy. What
+right had Brenton, or the nurse, or the meddlesome old doctor with his
+hair on end and without his cuffs, to come inside her house and overset
+her religion? To elevate their own, instead? It was her religion, just
+as it was her house, her child. And her religion was good. Else, she
+never would have adopted it. What matter if their cruder minds must
+have the crass physical details of bottles and spoons with which to
+fight sin-born disease? What if their narrow blindness destroyed their
+vision of the all-embracing, all-compelling Mind, source of Holiness,
+and of Knowledge, and, by consequence, of Health? Should she, by reason
+of their ignoble interferences and persecutions, yield her own
+allegiance to the Higher Light? Not she! Rather would she fling
+herself, heart and soul, into the freshening tide of her own visible
+church. Out of its ritual only, could she gain new fervour to bear and
+endure and then, if need be, fight for her spiritual freedom. It was
+only what the martyrs of old had done; only the work which fell upon
+the upholders of any new religion.
+
+Katharine, walking the floor of her own room, that night, forgot the
+holy calm born of the Universal Mind and its optimistic tenets, and by
+slow degrees lashed herself into a scientific replica of a nervous
+tantrum. Described in unscientific language, she was a mere shaking
+bundle of injured and angry egotism. In the language of her creed, she
+was a suffering, striving martyr. Her martyrdom, moreover, led her to
+order breakfast served to her in her own room. It also led her to eat
+hungrily, in the intervals of making her toilet for the train.
+
+She was already hatted and gloved, when Brenton discovered her
+intention.
+
+"You are not going out, Katharine?" he asked, with the curious lack of
+tact which all men show at times.
+
+"I am."
+
+"But--the baby?"
+
+"Baby is better. I have just been in to see him," she replied, as she
+buttoned her coat, and then flicked a grain of dust from its sleeve.
+
+Brenton shut his lips for just a minute. Then,--
+
+"Katharine," he said very gravely; "you must have seen that the baby is
+only just alive."
+
+Katharine's glance was resting anxiously upon a drop or two of water on
+the fingers of her glove. She seemed not to have heard her husband's
+words. He repeated them.
+
+"Katharine, can't you see that our baby, our little boy, is going
+fast?"
+
+Katharine looked up.
+
+"Nonsense, Scott!" she said, with perfect calm. "The baby is as well as
+he was, last night. If he is so desperately ill, the nurse wouldn't
+have gone away and left him all alone, as I found him. The nurse knows
+what she is about; that is," swiftly she corrected herself; "she would,
+if Doctor Keltridge would let her alone. If anything does happen to the
+child, it will be through you."
+
+"Through me?" Brenton whitened.
+
+"Yes," Katharine answered, reckless of her husband's hurt, reckless,
+too, of the probable state of his nerves, after his all-night vigil. "I
+could have cured baby, if you had kept out of it. Your doctors' poisons
+have done harm enough; but your fears, your distrust, have been the
+final touch. If you had let me alone, I could have saved him. Even now,
+it may not be too late." She turned, her chin in the air and her eyes
+bright with anger, although about her lips there lurked a little smile
+of pleasure in what seemed to her her own excessive self-control.
+
+Brenton's self-control, though, was the greater. However much his voice
+might shake, the hand he laid upon her arm was singularly steady.
+
+"Katharine, my dear wife," he said; "I must beg you not to go away from
+the house just now."
+
+"Why not?" Katharine's voice was metallic in its hardness.
+
+"I am afraid you will be sorry for ever, if you do. The baby--"
+
+She shook his hand away.
+
+"It is for the baby I am going, Scott. Here and alone, I am powerless
+to counteract the harm you do. I must have help."
+
+"What help?" he asked her hoarsely, while his eyes, almost unseeingly,
+were busy with a thin trickle of water that clung to the front breadths
+of her pale-brown gown.
+
+"The help of my church, of their combined prayers. Alone, I can do
+nothing. I must ask them all to help me, if my baby boy is to be saved
+from the consequences of his father's doubts."
+
+"Katharine!"
+
+But, with a flutter of her skirts, she had vanished from the room,
+smiling and self-reliant and very, very smug. To her belief, she had
+borne down the ignorant oppression of the unbeliever; she had given
+testimony to her indomitable confidence in her new creed; she was about
+to give still stronger testimony to the indomitable healing power of
+that same creed.
+
+And Brenton, left alone, shut his teeth hard upon the ugly words that
+struggled to his lips. Then, white and wan, less from his all-night
+vigil than from the five-minute altercation with his wife, he turned
+away and re-entered the room where the child was lying.
+
+It needed no eye skilled in watching the advance of death to be aware
+that the little life was ebbing fast. The look of waxiness had been
+increasing, all night long; the breathing was becoming fitful; the tiny
+figure seemed relaxed in every weakening limb. The eyes, though heavy
+and lustreless, were wide, wide open, and the white little lips wavered
+into a ghost of a smile, as Brenton crossed the threshold. Then one
+little hand stirred ever so slightly, strove to lift itself in
+greeting, failed.
+
+"Daddy's boy!" Brenton said, as bravely as he could.
+
+The ghost of the smile grew a bit stronger, as Brenton sat down beside
+the crib and, after his custom of these later days, held out one brown
+forefinger. Instantly, the wan little claw closed around the finger,
+the baby nestled slightly, and then fell into a light doze.
+
+The nurse's voice, when she spoke, failed to penetrate the doze.
+
+"I called up Doctor Keltridge, and he said he had a broken hip to set
+at once. It may be two hours, before he can get here. He told me to
+keep up the stimulant."
+
+"You have used it?"
+
+"Once, while you were talking to Mrs. Brenton. It is nearly time,
+again."
+
+"Did it----" Brenton's voice failed him utterly.
+
+The nurse hedged.
+
+"It is too soon yet to know. The second dose ought to show more."
+
+But the second dose did not show, nor yet the third. After the fourth
+one, the nurse looked up.
+
+"Can you telephone to Mrs. Brenton?" she asked.
+
+"You think?"
+
+"That she should be here. Can you get her?"
+
+And then Brenton was forced to confess the truth. The nurse accepted
+the truth as mercifully as she was able.
+
+"Poor little woman!" she said. "Isn't it wonderful the hold the thing
+gets--"
+
+Her question was never ended. Instead, she laid her hand on Brenton's
+sleeve.
+
+"Look!" she whispered.
+
+All at once, the doze had ended. With its ending, all look of tiredness
+and suffering had gone away out of the baby face. Instead, the little
+eyes were eager; the little lips were breaking into a smile of utter
+joyousness; the little arms were up-stretched strongly, the hands wide
+open and shaking in happy recognition.
+
+"Nurse!" Then Brenton steadied himself with a mighty effort, and bent
+forward to hold out his arms. "Daddy take boy?" he urged gently, in his
+accustomed phrase.
+
+There came an instantaneous check upon the baby's eagerness. The head
+turned, while the eyes met Brenton's without a spark of response. Then
+once again the little arms shot upward above the brightening face where
+the eager look of recognition was changing fast to a happiness
+ineffable, to a glad surety that the vision opened to the baby eyes
+alone was far beyond the dreams which mortal mind could fashion.
+
+Then the little arms dropped backward; but the ineffable happiness
+remained.
+
+Gently, very gently, Scott Brenton folded the baby hands across the
+muslin nightie, and smoothed the ruffled baby hair above the waxy brow.
+Then, half unconsciously,--
+
+"For Thine is the Kingdom," he said.
+
+And then, a little later on, he wondered why he had said it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
+
+
+The opening of the second semester of the college year found Instructor
+Brenton busy with his classes.
+
+Conservative old Saint Peter's had taken the upheaval badly, not so
+much the theoretic questions at stake regarding the soundness of their
+rector's doctrine, as the loss of their rector himself. The older
+members of the congregation loved Brenton as a son, the younger ones as
+something a little dearer than a brother. One and all, they missed his
+pastoral visitations, his incisive sermons on the righteousness of
+honest living; above all else, they missed his voice. If they could
+have kept these personal marks of the man himself, their rector might
+have been welcome to believe anything he chose. He was their shepherd
+and their friend. His curate was there to supply theology enough to
+answer for them both.
+
+However, Brenton, once his resignation was handed in, turned a deaf ear
+alike to argument and coaxing. The reason for his resignation he had
+insisted on setting forth downrightly: he was able no longer to affirm
+absolute belief in some of the main tenets of his church. The entire
+community loved Brenton. Now it gave proof of that love in a most loyal
+fashion. It neither gossiped, nor indulged in undue speculation; it
+merely did its best to accept the given explanation in all simplicity,
+and say as little about it as was possible. How well it lived up to its
+efforts was another question.
+
+Of course, one little circle of Brenton's intimates, the Keltridges and
+the Opdykes and the Dennisons, talked of the matter freely among
+themselves, discussing causes, watching for effects. They regretted the
+necessity for change, doubted it, even. Granted the necessity, though,
+they rejoiced that Brenton could be transplanted from one calling to
+the other, without the need for their losing him from their midst. It
+was Brenton the friend they cared for; not Brenton the preacher and
+pastor of souls. Moreover, there was not one of them who, asked, would
+have hesitated to affirm that now at last Scott Brenton was entering
+upon his true calling. Indeed, had not Professor Opdyke the word of his
+old colleague, Professor Mansfield, to that effect? Had not Professor
+Mansfield, even, left his classroom, in the middle of the term, for the
+sake of appearing before the trustees of the college, and giving his
+vehement testimony to that same effect?
+
+The college, that section of the college, at least, which dealt with
+the chemical department, rejoiced greatly, when once Scott Brenton was
+launched upon his lecture courses. Doctor Keltridge, trustee and
+medical adviser, though, had a double cause for his rejoicing. Not only
+did he believe that at last Brenton was the right peg in the proper
+hole; but he was overjoyed at the possibility of what the change might
+accomplish in the man himself. Brenton, on the morning that his child
+had died, had lost something which he never would regain. In more
+senses than one, his wife and he, henceforward, would be twain, not the
+one flesh ordained by matrimony. In the hour of his supreme need,
+Katharine had left him and had gone her scientific way. In that hour,
+moreover, his little son, pledge of their closest union, had been taken
+from him; and Brenton was only too well aware that now no second and
+similar pledge would ever be. In the eyes of the world and of the
+literal law, Katharine was still his wife. In the eye of the spirit,
+she was holding herself as far aloof from him as if their marriage had
+never taken place, so far aloof that, nowadays, Brenton scarcely felt
+the friction of her presence.
+
+For the first month and the second, this aloofness came upon Scott
+Brenton's nerves, and drove him well-nigh mad. Night after night, he
+tramped the floor, asking himself in vain if such a situation could
+develop, without some fault upon his side. Day after day, he strove
+most conscientiously to renew the old relations with his wife. He might
+as well have tried to exhume his baby son and blow in the breath of
+life between the folded lips. The one was no more dead than was the
+other. Moreover, as he had been in no conscious sense the cause of
+either tragedy, so in no sense could he be the conscious cure. The
+forces culminating in his present trouble had been set in motion long,
+long before the hour when Catie had poked her curly head in at the
+gate. Critical, censorious and selfishly ambitious in her little
+childhood, her womanhood had strengthened along these well-marked
+lines, and the lines had led her infallibly into the net of the
+shallowest, most smug religion that ever has set forth a plausible
+excuse for total selfishness. Once she was landed in the net, the rest
+was simple. She was in growing harmony with Universal Mind. Whatever
+thing opposed her viewpoint was out of harmony, and therefore sinful
+and laden with incipient disease, curable only so far as it yielded
+allegiance to her scientific doctrine.
+
+And that allegiance Brenton would not yield. In that one matter, he
+stood firm, albeit he realized but too well that his firmness
+jeopardized for ever his relations with his wife. After the funeral of
+their little son, there had been two stormy scenes between them, and
+then a silence more pregnant of disaster than any storm could ever be.
+Katharine smiled, and carried her chin high in the air. Brenton's head
+was bowed between his shoulders; he walked heavily, his eyes upon the
+ground. Indeed, the two of them were equally lacking in elasticity.
+Katharine's tension was too great to admit of any margin for spring.
+Brenton's relaxation was too complete to leave any one aware that a
+spring ever had existed.
+
+As the weeks ran on into months, the spiritual separation between them
+grew more definite. There was no friction, no clashing. They were too
+remote from each other for that. They met at meals as usual; they dined
+out together; occasionally they sat out a concert side by side. Apart
+from that, however, they went their ways without discussion. Katharine
+was flinging her entire enthusiasm, nowadays, into her religious life,
+and into its interesting corollary, the beautification of her bodily
+temple for the Universal Mind. She prinked and preened herself just as
+industriously as she conned her morocco-bound books of devotion. She
+went to church on Sundays with a zeal that balked at no combination of
+storms and mileage. Between the services, she spent the greater part of
+her time in the society of certain fellow scientists who lived not far
+away, and she emerged from their society so filled with zeal as to make
+small evangelistic forays into the borders of Saint Peter's Parish.
+Olive Keltridge was one victim. Ramsdell was another. Ramsdell,
+however, stated his own platform unmincingly.
+
+"I beg your pardon for so speaking to a lady," he said crisply; "but I
+was born in the Established Church, and I don't go for kicking it over
+into a perfect slush of tommy-rot. Besides, my present job is to look
+out for Mr. Hopdyke, not to go off my 'ead, arguing about religion."
+And, with a salute more crushing than he was at all aware, Ramsdell
+swung on his heel and went striding away down the street.
+
+All this was bound to tell upon a man of Brenton's calibre, the more so
+in that Brenton already was worn out with fighting his own personal
+battles of the spirit. For the first few weeks of this evident, though
+tacit, hostility, he suffered acutely, both from the hostility itself,
+and from his constant self-examinations to discover whether some fault
+of his had been the cause. In time, however, there came the inevitable
+reaction towards a sensible steadiness. Even the spirit can become
+callous in time, as Brenton was finding out, half to his own regret,
+half to his infinite relief.
+
+Moreover, outside interests were daily growing more insistent; of
+necessity they crowded out a little of his personal and domestic worry.
+There were innumerable conferences with Doctor Keltridge and Professor
+Opdyke; there was one discussion with the assembled trustees of the
+college; there was one hard hour of explanation before the assembled
+wardens of the church. Last of all came the talk with his curate whom,
+despite his bunny hood and his archaic theological tenets, Brenton had
+grown to love. Up to the very hour of their talk, the callow little
+curate had gained no inkling of what his rector had been passing
+through. To his young mind, the experience was no less cruel to himself
+than it had been to Brenton. He had supposed that the belief of every
+man was cut out by a paper pattern outlined from directions in the
+Pentateuch, and washed in with dainty coloured borders taken from the
+Gospels and the Book of Revelation. It shocked him unspeakably to find
+that any man had dared to tear up that pattern and draft a fresh one
+for himself. However, as the talk went on, shock had yielded to an
+intense pity, born of his love for his superior officer. Brenton was
+mistaken, wofully mistaken; but the mistake had cost him dear. All the
+more, he was deserving pity upon that account. The tears stood in the
+little curate's honest eyes, as he gripped Brenton's hand at parting.
+He could not understand his rector in the least; but he could be
+perfectly aware that it was no small privilege to be admitted to the
+confidence of so upright a man.
+
+These preliminary duties done, Brenton lost no time in making public
+the fact of his resignation. At the time, he was too busy with the
+practical details of his transplanting to pay any great heed to the
+storm of opposition which his resignation roused. Later on, it pleased
+him, just as the enthusiasm of his college classes pleased him, after
+it had ceased to be a fact and had turned into a memory. For the time
+being, though, he had stopped all feeling. Instead, he must preach his
+final sermons without flinching, must confine them so closely to the
+matter of mere practical living as to leave no loophole for dogma to
+creep in; he must make everything as easy as possible for his successor
+who, at best, was bound to have a hard time of it in starting; above
+all, he must help Katharine to choose exactly such a house as she
+wished, and to furnish it exactly as her taste should dictate. And so
+the pressure of outside interests fell on Scott Brenton's shoulders
+until, perforce, they straightened up to bear the burden. And the
+straightening was by no means wholly theoretical. It was an infinitely
+saner, sounder Brenton who faced his classes on the first morning of
+the new semester, than any one, watching him throughout the previous
+year, would have ever dared to hope.
+
+And Doctor Keltridge, who had watched him rather hopelessly, gave great
+thanks accordingly.
+
+"You've proved the wisdom of your change, Brenton," he remarked, one
+day.
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"The whole look of you. You aren't the same man you were, five months
+ago. Mentally and physically, you're sleeker."
+
+Brenton laughed.
+
+"Is that a sign of wisdom?"
+
+The doctor met the question with composure.
+
+"As a general thing, yes. The normal being is sleek by nature. It's
+only when he cramps himself that he gets wrinkled. Cramps himself, I
+say. Cramping from an outside source never has much effect upon him,
+unless he chooses to have it. No; that's not Christian Science; it's
+mere common sense. As a rule, the two things are incompatible. By the
+way, I hear that your ex-curate has been tackling your wife."
+
+"No!"
+
+"A fact. The boy told me. She started out to tackle him, and he
+clinched with her. I must say it was plucky of him, even if it didn't
+appear to do much good."
+
+Brenton's gray eyes clouded.
+
+"The only question is: what is good," he said thoughtfully.
+
+"No question about it," the doctor blustered. "The only chance the
+idiot woman has--"
+
+Brenton interrupted.
+
+"She is my wife," he reminded the doctor.
+
+"I don't care if she is your wife, twenty times over," Doctor Keltridge
+said vehemently. "We both know the infernal thing that she has done."
+
+"But, if she believed it was right--" Brenton was beginning faintly.
+
+The doctor bore him down.
+
+"Because she is a semi-maniac, she's not to be encouraged in her
+destruction of the human race," he argued hotly. Then, as he saw the
+tightening and the whitening of Brenton's lips, he forgot his argument
+in swift contrition. "Damn it all, Brenton! I vowed I'd never mention
+the thing to you again, as long as I lived, and here I am again, off on
+the same old subject. I'm a garrulous old man; but----" his keen face
+softened, puckered into a score of wrinkles; "but I loved that baby
+boy. I brought him into the world, and I had spent no small amount of
+time congratulating myself upon the fact that you'd got him, at any
+rate; that you'd have him for a comforting little peg to hang your
+spiritual hat on, when you came home from preaching the gospel to a
+disgruntled and disgruntling world. Almost I think I felt his death
+more than--"
+
+"Not more than I." Brenton faced him steadily.
+
+"Not in one sense. And yet, I did feel it more, because, from the
+first, I saw how needless it would be."
+
+But Brenton lifted up his hand.
+
+"It's over now," he said concisely. "Why talk about it? Some memories
+are best off, left to perish."
+
+And, in all truth, this was one of them. Now and then, it would stir in
+its grave, and lift up its ugly head for recognition; but, as a rule,
+the two men had done their best to heap the dust of time and
+forgetfulness upon its grave. And yet, certain scenes are so hideous
+that one never quite forgets them. It had been ordained for Brenton
+that the passing of his baby son should be followed by such a scene, by
+a discovery so tragic as to make the painless baby death sink into
+insignificance beside it.
+
+It was the doctor himself who had made the discovery, made it just too
+late to have it do much good to any one. The nurse and Brenton were
+still bending above the frilly crib, smoothing out the muslin folds
+around the child and straightening the blankets, when the doctor came
+into the room, eager, his face alight with strength and purpose to do
+his share in what he knew too well could be only a fight to the very
+finish. The words of cheer died from his lips, though, as he caught
+sight of Brenton's face.
+
+"Not yet?" he asked, with an abruptness far more sympathetic than any
+amount of tears.
+
+"Yes. Just now."
+
+"Impossible!" The single word was curt. Still more curt was the brief
+question to the nurse, "You gave the stimulant, as I ordered?"
+
+"Three times."
+
+"What effect did it have?"
+
+"None."
+
+"Impossible!" the doctor said, yet once again. "It is what we always
+use in such cases as this. There must be some mistake. Show me the
+bottle."
+
+The nurse turned scarlet at the curt command. Then quietly she rose and
+fetched the bottle, now half empty.
+
+"Let me take it." The doctor's face was now as scarlet as her own, the
+veins upon his brow were swollen and hard as knotted cords; but his
+hand was very steady, as he took the bottle, removed the cork, smelled,
+tasted. "Who has had access to this bottle?" he thundered then, and his
+voice boded little good to any meddler.
+
+"Mr. Brenton and myself."
+
+"Who else?"
+
+"Nobody."
+
+The veins about the temples began throbbing heavily. Brenton could see
+the skin about them tighten to the pulse-beat. Between them, the keen
+eyes gleamed like balls of polished metal surcharged with electricity.
+
+"Think again, nurse," Doctor Keltridge said slowly. "And remember that
+your professional reputation is at stake. That bottle has been emptied
+and refilled with water. Where has that bottle been?"
+
+"On the mantel."
+
+"Who has been in the room?"
+
+"Mr. Brenton, myself, and the baby."
+
+"And Mrs. Brenton?" The doctor's eyes were fixed upon the nurse, as he
+put the question. He did not see the sudden whitening of Brenton's
+face; but his trained ear did make out the swift intake of Brenton's
+breath.
+
+"She came and went."
+
+"When you were here?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you were here, you or Mr. Brenton, all night long?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And all the morning?"
+
+"Except when I was telephoning to you."
+
+"Hm!" This time, as casually as he was able, the doctor glanced at
+Brenton, and his glance caught Brenton stuffing a wadded handkerchief
+into his pocket. Above his forehead, his hair was damp and sticky. "You
+left the room, while you called me up? And, when you went away, the
+bottle was on the mantel? You are sure?"
+
+"I am sure."
+
+"Where was it, when you came back?"
+
+"In the same place. I know that, for I went straight to it. You had
+just told me it would keep the child alive, until you came." Under the
+rapid fire of questions, the nurse's voice began to show defiance.
+
+The doctor recognized the defiance, and lifted up his head.
+
+"Steady, nurse," he cautioned her. "Don't get on your nerves now; there
+is too much at stake. Where were the others, while you were
+telephoning?"
+
+"Mr. Brenton had gone downstairs to get his breakfast. Mrs. Brenton was
+dressing in her room."
+
+"All the time?"
+
+"I--I supposed so." The nurse turned to Brenton sharply. "You met her,
+Mr. Brenton, when she started down the stairs?" she asked him. "I am
+sure I heard you speaking to her, sure that I heard her answer."
+
+Brenton wet his lips; then he passed his hand across his brow, palm
+outward. Both nurse and doctor could see the heavy streak of moisture
+gathered in the life-line.
+
+"Forgive me, doctor," he said, after a minute. "I seem dazed by this
+thing; it has been a long and anxious night, and I am more upset than I
+had supposed. Mrs. Brenton? She has gone away to church; she felt that
+now, if ever, she needed the help and the prayers of her own people."
+
+But the doctor was not to be put off with mere evasions. He pressed his
+question mercilessly, hating himself acutely, all the while.
+
+"You saw her, as the nurse says, when she first came out of her room,
+this morning?"
+
+"Yes." Brenton's voice had lost its resonance and sounded curiously
+listless, as he answered. "Yes, I saw her then, and urged her not to
+go."
+
+The doctor's eyes veiled themselves abruptly, and he turned away. The
+nurse, watching, felt he was satisfied that no blunder had occurred
+within the house. Brenton, though, knew differently. Watching the
+doctor, he was well aware that, in the doctor's mind, there were no
+more doubts as to the person who had made the fatal substitution than
+as if, like Brenton's self, his keen old eyes had rested upon the
+telltale drops clinging to Katharine's front breadths.
+
+The doctor's eyes had veiled themselves; Brenton had turned away and
+sunk down in a chair. An instant later, both the men had rallied to a
+swift attention. Katharine, alert, smiling a little and stepping
+lightly, carelessly, it seemed, was coming up the stairs.
+
+Doctor Keltridge turned to the nurse.
+
+"You must be very tired," he said, with a kindliness which yet held its
+own note of command. "Go now and eat a good breakfast, and then lie
+down. I shall be here, for the present." Then he faced back to
+Katharine, who stood upon the threshold.
+
+"You here, doctor?" she said jauntily, as she came in. "I'm sure it's
+very good of you."
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Brenton. I am here."
+
+His accent took a little from the jauntiness of Katharine's bearing.
+
+"Has anything happened?" she asked swiftly.
+
+"Happened?" The doctor's voice was grim with unphrased reproach.
+
+"How is my baby boy?" she asked again.
+
+Her well-considered flutter of agitation angered the doctor utterly.
+His reply came like a blow from a bludgeon.
+
+"Dead."
+
+"Doctor! My baby boy! When? How?" And Katharine, really startled now,
+hurried across the floor to the corner where the frilly crib shielded
+the quiet sleeper from her gaze.
+
+Half-way across the floor, she was brought to an abrupt halt. The
+doctor's hand was shut upon her arm in a clutch of iron; the doctor's
+eyes were blazing down at her in a rage such as Brenton, watching, had
+never before seen upon the face of human man.
+
+"Stop!" he bade her curtly, yet in a voice too low to give the servants
+below stairs any hint of the strife going on above. "Your baby boy is
+sleeping in his Heavenly Father's arms. It is not for any one like you
+to try to waken him; not for you, unrepenting, to look into his face."
+
+"Unrepenting! Doctor!" Katharine tried to shrink away from the accusing
+face and voice; but the iron hand held her firmly.
+
+"Yes, unrepenting," the doctor repeated gravely and, as he spoke, he
+loosed his hold upon her arm. "Mrs. Brenton, you asked me how the baby
+died. There is your answer." And he pointed to the row of bottles on
+the shelf.
+
+Instantly she rallied. Neither, whether to her shame or credit be it
+said, did she make any effort to deny his wordless charge.
+
+"Well? Suppose I did?" she said, with sudden calmness. "It was my only
+chance to save my child."
+
+"Katharine--"
+
+"Wait, Brenton." The doctor spoke as gently as if he had been talking
+to a tired little child. "Please leave this thing to me; it may save
+you something, later on." Then his voice hardened. "You admit it,
+then?" he queried.
+
+Without a glance at her husband, Katharine faced the doctor, her head
+held high, her eyes and cheeks blazing with anger.
+
+"I am proud to do so," she said, and her voice was hard as steel. "It
+is my one chance to speak out in behalf of my faith."
+
+"Your faith has murdered your child," the doctor told her harshly.
+
+She answered him with equal harshness.
+
+"The murder lies at your own door. Left alone, I would have saved him.
+Your drugs have weakened him; your unreasonable doubts have killed him
+utterly. Between the two of you, yourself and--him," and the little
+pause was venomous with unspoken hatred; "you have killed my baby boy.
+I did my best; I took the final chance. But I could not go to seek the
+help of my own church, and leave you, unguarded, to do your harm in
+your own way. I did the only thing left to me, when I emptied out your
+bottle and filled it with water. We are told that no healing can be
+accomplished, if drugs are being used at the same time."
+
+"Who tells you?" the doctor queried stormily.
+
+She stared at him disdainfully, before she answered,--
+
+"The All-Mother of our Church." Then, still disdainfully, she turned to
+leave the room. "Scott, if you wish to speak to me, I shall be in my
+own room," she said.
+
+And then, still smiling slightly, still a little bit disdainful, she
+went away and left the two men standing there alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
+
+
+"He isn't always such an ass," Dolph said, as he crossed his legs,
+preparatory to a long discussion. "It's only when he sets out to be
+bold and bad that he's so intolerable."
+
+"Prather and the adjectives don't seem to match up very well," Reed
+objected.
+
+"No. That is the whole trouble; he can't live up to his ambitions. The
+poor little beggar would like nothing better than to go the pace, as a
+sort of experimental lap for the instruction of his characters; but he
+always finds the pace too swift, and lags behind. As result, he isn't
+fast, but merely skittish. In the same way, he'd like to pose as a
+black-hearted villain. Instead, he gets to a point where he is just
+about as unsanctified as a Sunday edition of fruit salad."
+
+"Sunday?"
+
+"Yes, when they chuck in all the odds and ends of wine left from the
+dinners of the week. To the untrained tongue, it is a fearful pleasure
+to partake thereof. Prather makes up his iniquitous debauches after the
+same recipe: absorbing the yellow journals and the orange output of his
+fellow novelists, going down to New York for a week end, and then
+coming home to embody in a novel his consequent attack of biliousness."
+
+"You've read his last one?"
+
+Dolph nodded.
+
+"And therefore I know whereof I speak," he added gloomily. "I wish the
+little beggar would leave off his moving picture shows of town society,
+and hie his muse once more in search of subjects from the woolly West."
+
+"Knowing the West more than a little, I don't." Reed spoke with
+decision.
+
+"What's the harm?"
+
+"He doesn't get within a gunshot of the truth."
+
+"No matter. He thinks he does, and the average member of his reading
+public doesn't know enough to realize the difference."
+
+"All the worse. He ought to be sued for libel. By the way, did you know
+he has been having his professional eye on me?"
+
+"For what?"
+
+"Copy, of course. He got to calling rather often. I must say that I
+lured him on; I found his babble a distraction. Then, one day--Prather
+is nothing, if not transparent--he let out the fact that he was taking
+notes of me, for his next novel."
+
+"Of all the--"
+
+Reed interrupted.
+
+"Not in my present ignominy, however; but as I must have been, he
+explained most considerately, in my prime. He must have had good
+confidence in his own imagination, though."
+
+"Of course," Dolph said serenely. "He's always banked on that. I've
+heard him telling, after any number of different dinners, what a feat
+it was for him to write _A Portia of the Rockies_ when, for a fact, he
+never had been farther west than Toledo. But what is he going to do
+with you?"
+
+"Nothing. I called him off."
+
+Dolph nodded at the ankle he was nursing in both hands.
+
+"Grand work, that!" he said. "It would be about as easy as calling off
+a flea that was starting on a cross-country journey to the nearest dog.
+How did you manage?"
+
+Reed's brown eyes laughed; but his voice was grave.
+
+"I invoked Ramsdell, and he did the deed. From all accounts, he did it
+thoroughly, for Prather hasn't put his nose inside my room, since the
+day that Ramsdell escorted him downstairs."
+
+"I say!" Dolph looked up suddenly. "I've a patch to put over that hole.
+About three weeks ago? Yes? Well, at Olive Keltridge's last dinner,
+Prather came edging up to me. I saw he had things on his mind, and I
+wasn't busy, so I let him get them off. Else, I was afraid he'd
+strangle with the unaccustomed load."
+
+"And the things were me?" Reed inquired urbanely.
+
+"Yes. He asked me if I had heard that you were growing very nervous
+lately. That you--Well, never mind the rest of it. In the time of it,
+though, I supposed that it was his novelist's imagination that had got
+to work. Now I know it was only another manifestation of the almighty
+Ramsdell."
+
+"He is almighty, Dolph. I'd be badly off without him."
+
+"So I observe." Dolph chuckled. "At first, I was as afraid of him as if
+he had been a country undertaker looking for a job; but I'm slowly
+coming to the belief that the fellow is an actual wag. Really, you'd be
+badly off without him. He'll stay on, of course?"
+
+"As long as I can keep him. He informs me daily that he'll see me
+through it till I die. From all indications, though, I'm a good deal
+more afraid of his dying, first."
+
+"Rot!" Dolph remarked cheerily. "What you need, Opdyke, is to forego
+thoughts of dying, and get busy."
+
+"What about?" Reed asked a little bitterly. "My present environment
+isn't particularly fitted for the strenuous life."
+
+Dolph shut his two hands, side by side, around his ankle. When he
+spoke, though, his voice was unconcerned.
+
+"Not unless you take your profession into bed with you," he remarked.
+
+From behind Opdyke's courteous smile for a rather dull joke, there
+gathered interest, comprehension, eagerness.
+
+"Dennison, you mean something or other, out of that," he said, after a
+little pause.
+
+Dolph shot him one swift glance of scrutiny.
+
+"Naturally. As a rule, I don't talk at random," he said then.
+
+"What do you mean, exactly?" Reed sought to put the question steadily,
+but his voice throbbed with excitement.
+
+Satisfied with the start that he had made, Dolph let go his ankle and
+sank back inertly in his chair.
+
+"What idiots you specialist fellows are!" he observed indolently. "Once
+you get smacked on the head, you're all in. You think you are killed,
+and, instead of kicking around to find out the truth of the matter, you
+promptly proceed to turn up your toes."
+
+Reed eyed him keenly, spoke impatiently.
+
+"Interpret, Dolph. I may be dense; but I can't see what it is you're
+driving at."
+
+"More fool you! I thought better of you, Opdyke, than all that," Dolph
+told him, with unabated serenity. "Didn't you ever hear of such a thing
+as a consulting engineer?"
+
+"I ought, as it was my official title," Reed made curt answer. "What
+then?"
+
+"Put your title into commission, man."
+
+"Impossible."
+
+"Not at all. Of course, you can't go raging around the mountains; but
+you may have heard of an old gentleman named Mahomet. Yes? Well, there
+you are. And you've a laboratory and a staff of chemists under your
+very elbow. Make your people come to you, instead of your going to
+them. Your reputation is all made by now. Sit back and get the working
+good out of it, not chuck it away as if it wasn't worth an uninitialled
+Lincoln cent."
+
+Nothing more nonchalant and unconcerned than Dolph's drawling utterance
+could have been imagined. None the less, his words appeared to have
+kindled into new flame the burnt-out fires of Opdyke's professional
+ambition. For a minute or two, he lay quite silent, while two scarlet
+patches glowed upon his cheeks, and while the eyes above them seemed to
+fix themselves on distant vistas far beyond the limits of Dolph's
+sight. Then at last, he spoke, whimsically as far as his mere wording
+went, but in a voice which Dolph found scarcely recognizable.
+
+"Dennison," he said slowly; "for a man who aims to be considered a
+genius by reason of the chronic mismatching of his socks and ties, and
+by his discordant metaphors, you once in a while do have an
+inspiration. Thanks. And now, would you mind it, if I asked you to go
+home? I believe I'd like a little time to think things over. Come in,
+to-morrow morning, though. Else, I shall send Ramsdell out to capture
+you."
+
+Next day, Dolph did come in, and again the next. On the third day,
+Opdyke had a half-dozen letters to show him, a half-dozen bits of
+planning to submit to his shrewd young brain.
+
+"I've rather got to count on you in this thing, Dennison," he said
+concisely. "My father is an older man, and the past two years have been
+hard on him; he's not so aggressive as he was, not half so optimistic.
+Doctor Keltridge will be watching me to see that I'm not overdoing. He
+means well; but now and then it's healthy to overdo matters a little.
+Brenton has all he can handle, with his wife. Therefore, in view of
+Ramsdell's scholarly attainments, and until I'm justified in setting up
+a professional assistant, I rather fancy that it's up to you."
+
+"Thanks. I'm there, every time," Dolph told him crisply. "Besides,
+after yesterday, I'd walk on my ears for you."
+
+"You might give a sample exhibition now. Have you said anything, yet?"
+
+"No chance. Besides, I rather hated--Hang it all, Reed, I don't want to
+be in a hurry about shuffling off in your best shoes!"
+
+Reed's eyes lost a little of their eagerness; but his smile was
+unfaltering.
+
+"They never were my shoes, Dolph. Even if they had been, I couldn't
+wear them now; that has all gone by. And, if they had been mine, and I
+had had to pass them on to some one else, there is no one in the world
+I'd see walking off in them so contentedly as I would see you. Fact,
+man, so take it as it comes, and enter into your own kingdom."
+
+"If it is mine," Dolph said gravely.
+
+"I think it is. It is for you to find out, though. But remember this:
+you are not to feel for one instant that you're dispossessing any
+rightful heir. The chance is yours, Dolph. Most likely it never would
+have been mine, in any case. Now it is totally impossible."
+
+Dolph attempted one last remonstrance.
+
+"But why?" he asked vehemently.
+
+The smile faded from Reed's lips, and the lines around the lips grew
+grim.
+
+"Because," he answered tersely; "my common sense is in working order,
+even if my legs are not."
+
+And, with this downright assurance ringing in his ears and with the
+tragedy of its brave renunciation crowding out somewhat of his own
+hopefulness, Dolph Dennison went away in search of Olive Keltridge.
+
+Olive, however, was gone to a luncheon out of town, so Dolph was told
+by the maid who answered to his ringing. Therefore he went his way once
+more; and, feeling idle, unsettled, alternately depressed at the
+prospect of what he deemed his coming selfishness in seeking Olive
+again later on, and elated with a general zeal for altruistic effort by
+the success of his attempt to arouse Opdyke's dormant ambition: because
+of all these things, he suddenly decided that it would be the part of
+good fellowship to pay a visit to his former rector and present
+colleague, Brenton.
+
+To be sure, Dolph had never had the habit of calling upon Brenton. From
+the first, his liking for the man had been a temperate one, a liking
+mitigated by his own regrets concerning the nature of Brenton's sense
+of humour. Moreover, he shied a little bit at Brenton's priestly
+calling, shied a little bit more at the idea of coming into closer
+quarters with Brenton's wife. Now, from all accounts, the wife was
+somewhat in abeyance; and the sudden reversal of Brenton's collar
+buttons had turned him from the picture of a priest to at least the
+semblance of a man.
+
+In regard to Brenton, Dolph Dennison saw no need to mince matters. His
+clear young eyes had made out the one loose thread that sagged and
+knotted across and across the texture of Brenton's mind. He saw it and,
+lacking knowledge of its source in Brenton's erratic father, he
+condemned it with the cocksure harshness of exceeding youth. Without
+it, Brenton would have been all man. With it, Dolph believed, he was
+predestined to futility. Indeed, what hope was there for a man who
+would get himself all waxy over such played-out doctrines as
+predestination, and then sit by, impotently calm, and watch his wife go
+off upon the Christian Science tangent, without a word to stop her and
+tie her down to reason? It was like finding cold, bare bones embedded
+in one's breakfast porridge. None the less, one did owe some social
+decencies to one's colleagues of the faculty. Therefore, despite his
+new-formed porridge metaphor, Dolph trudged away in the direction of
+the Brentons' home.
+
+The new home was a smaller one than Saint Peter's rectory. It stood
+back a little from the street, under a trio of giant hemlocks which
+shaded the front verandah and the long stretch of gravelled walk. The
+shady walk was damp now, with the moisture of the early spring, and the
+wet little stones ground only softly underneath Dolph's heels, so
+softly that their murmur was quite inaudible inside the house, although
+a window, wide open to the front verandah, gave to Dolph, as he crossed
+the lawn, a full knowledge of the discussion going on within. It was a
+one-sided sort of a discussion, to all appearing. Moreover, from the
+pitch and the velocity of the voice, Dolph judged the discussion to be
+largely on the part of the Brentons' most recent cook.
+
+"There's no use in my trying to please you," he heard the voice say, as
+he started up the strip of gravel. "You find fault with everything I
+do; you interfere with my rights--"
+
+There came the low murmur of another voice. Then,--
+
+"Rights? My rights to rule my life according to my own beliefs. My
+rights to seek the Universal Truth. I have my way to go, as you say you
+have yours. The two ways can never be the same. I have tried my best to
+make them so; but it is no use."
+
+Again the murmur.
+
+"And my best to live up to my share of a bad bargain," came the brutal
+answer. "My best to--" The voice choked with its own emotions.
+
+"Tut! Tut!" Dolph remarked softly, at the invisible owner of the voice.
+"Steady, now; or you'll be crying, next thing you know."
+
+His warning, though, was needless. No trace of tears came into the
+militant reply to the next low words.
+
+"Yes, a bad, bad bargain. When we came together, I dreamed of a perfect
+union, a life of mutual opportunity. Oh, yes, I know. You say it's all
+on account of my beliefs, all because I have strayed away from the
+chalkline you marked out for me. But who else has strayed? Who else has
+thrown over his earlier creed? And you have thrown with it all belief
+in anything, tossed it aside as if it had been a worn-out rag. I have
+laid it aside, unharmed, and chosen out another creed of finer texture.
+And now you think I am going to stay here, inert, supine, and watch you
+tear that creed apart. Never!"
+
+"Grand language, that," Dolph soliloquized, as he mounted the steps and
+came into hearing of the words. "Evidently, it's not the cook; she
+wouldn't be up to that level."
+
+"Your fault? Whose fault, else? Who first took pains to teach me that
+the old creed of our parents was unbelievable? Who put the first
+questionings into my young mind? Who waked me from my mental sleep? It
+was you, yourself. Without you, I never should have known the peace
+which now I feel. For so much, I am grateful to you, Scott Brenton."
+
+On the final sentences, the angry voice had lowered its pitch a little,
+as if to come into some slight consonance with the peace of which it
+boasted. The different cadence, coupled with the unexpected use of
+Brenton's given name, brought light to Dolph Dennison.
+
+"Damn!" he remarked succinctly, letting go the knocker with which he
+had been hoping to put an end to the discussion. "It's Mrs. Brenton!"
+
+And then, obedient to the town-wide impulse which never failed to come
+in times of trouble, Dolph bolted down the Brenton doorsteps on his
+tiptoes, and dashed away in search of Doctor Keltridge.
+
+The pause which followed his departure, as a matter of course, had no
+connection with it. Rather, it was of two-fold purpose. Katharine
+needed time to catch her breath; Brenton needed time to rally his mind
+to meet the sudden strain. In the end, it was Brenton who spoke.
+
+"Then, Katharine, what is it your plan to do?"
+
+"My plan!" her voice bespoke her scorn. "At least, then, you are
+beginning to consider me a little."
+
+"I always have meant to consider you, Katharine."
+
+"When? In what way?" But she waited for no answer, except the one which
+she herself was ready to give. "None. You lived your life. You went
+your way. You gave me the crumbs of your time, of your mind. My share
+in your life came out of what your other friends left over. Did you
+consult me, when you turned into an Episcopalian? No! Did you consult
+me, when you threw it all aside, all your pretty broken toy that, once
+on a time, you had called religion, and went to teaching chemistry to a
+pack of girls? No! A thousand times, no! You made your life the way you
+wanted it. You say it was your right to do so. Then, in the same way, I
+claim it is my right, in searching for the truth, to make my life over
+into anything I choose."
+
+"But, if your choice is not a wise one?"
+
+She turned upon him fiercely.
+
+"Who are you to judge? And is your own choice so wise? Your own
+choices, rather, for, if I remember clearly, there have been a number
+of them. And what good have they done to any man?"
+
+"Too little good, Katharine," Brenton assented humbly. "At least,
+though, they have done no harm."
+
+"How do you know that?" she taunted him defiantly. "How is any man to
+know the harm he can do by a wrong belief? No; I don't mean the harm
+you may have done to yourself. That is superficial. You can cure it
+easily; there are dozens of mental plasters that you can apply." Her
+voice grew yet more scornful on the phrase. "But what about the harm to
+other people? What about the harm to me from all your theological
+shilly-shally? The only wonder of it all is that I was given the
+strength to come out of it and into something better. And now--"
+
+Brenton stayed her torrent of words by the very quiet of his brief
+question.
+
+"Now, Katharine?"
+
+"Now I demand my right to go out and make what I can of the little you
+have left me of my life."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+His quiet interrogations pierced her excitement as no opposition could
+have done. Her next reply, when it came, was almost devoid of passion.
+
+"I wish to study. I must have my time for that, not fritter it away on
+managing servants and going to faculty dinners."
+
+"To study what?"
+
+Again she flung up her head, and her eyes glittered. Her voice, though,
+was now under perfect control.
+
+"To study my religion, to learn to know it through and through."
+
+"I thought you knew it now."
+
+She looked at him as from a measureless height of wisdom and
+experience.
+
+"Does one ever know the Infinite? Our belief can not be packed into a
+neat bundle and tied up in the Apostles Creed. It is deeper than that,
+and far, far wider. And then," and, to Brenton's astonishment, her face
+lighted with a smile which was curiously akin to one of happy peace;
+"and, in time, I shall do my best to prepare myself to be a Healer."
+
+"Katharine!" Despite the peaceful smile which had heralded the
+announcement, Brenton felt his whole nature recoiling from the thought.
+
+"Why not?" she asked him swiftly. "You mean I am not worthy? Of course
+not--yet. In time, though, it will come; in time, I shall be free from
+thoughts such as have dragged me down into to-day's discussion. Not,
+though, while I live with you as you are now. Not while I have the
+daily friction of your unbelief and opposition. While these confront
+me, I am tied down to the lower level; the hour has come when I know it
+is my higher duty to go free. For that reason, I have told you this,
+to-day. One has to make practical plans, even if it is to carry out
+spiritual endeavours. There are things to arrange, before I go."
+
+There came a little silence. Then,--
+
+"You are really going?" Brenton asked.
+
+"I am."
+
+"When?"
+
+"I promised to be in Boston, early in the week."
+
+Again there came the silence. This time, it lasted until, with an
+ostentatiously natural step, Katharine turned away and left the room.
+Then, for an instant, Brenton stood staring after her. An instant
+later, he had dropped down at his desk and buried his face within the
+circle of his clasped arms, covering his ears to shut out the echo of
+his wife's accusing words. He tried to drive off from his mind the ugly
+question how far he himself had been blamable for this thing; how far
+he might have steadied Katharine by forcing her to go with him into all
+the secrets of his life. Instead, he tried to fix his mind upon the
+approaching ruin of his home; but he only could succeed in thinking
+about the passing of his baby boy, about the way the weazen little arms
+had shot upward, waving in joyous and insistent recognition. After all
+their tedious, aching search for truth, Katharine's search and his, had
+it been given to that little child to find out and acknowledge the
+eternal verities, hidden for ever from their older eyes?
+
+And, meanwhile, his world was waxing empty. First his beliefs had gone;
+and then his baby boy, his hope; and now, last of all, was to go his
+wife who should have been his final trust. The past was finished. Ahead
+of him was nothing but a lonely road which led nowhere and ended in
+nothing. Of what use for a tired man like himself to force himself up
+and on along it? Of what use to deny his share of domestic blame,
+merely because his intentions had been of the most unselfish? His head
+sank lower in his clasping arms.
+
+It was so that Doctor Keltridge found him when, an hour later, he came
+marching in at the unlatched front door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY
+
+
+"The thing is amounting to an obsession," Doctor Keltridge told
+Professor Opdyke testily, two months later. "I never saw a case of such
+ineradicable dubiousness concerning all the things that do not count."
+
+"But the fellow is sincere," the professor urged in extenuation.
+
+"Yes; that makes it all so much the worse, as we doctors are aware.
+It's a species of disease, Opdyke, and when a patient takes his disease
+seriously, as a general rule it's all up with him. Just how far has
+Brenton gone?"
+
+"From our standpoint, not very far; from the standpoint of the student
+mind, to the outer limits of agnosticism."
+
+The doctor whistled thoughtfully.
+
+"What a damn-fool he is, Opdyke!" he remarked, with stress upon the
+hyphen.
+
+"Yes, and no. If I were going to analyze him, I'd write his formula as
+B{_3}M+ECo{_7}, thrice brilliant man plus--and, mind you, the plus is a
+serious handicap--an embodied conscience raised to the seventh power.
+Brenton is brilliant; but his mind works in a series of swift flashes,
+and the flashes dazzle him till they spoil all of his perspective.
+Instead of taking them for what they are, mere sparks flying from the
+ends of broken mental contact, he thinks that they are errant gleams of
+universal truth, vouchsafed to him alone. Then his seven-horse-power
+conscience goes to work, and bids him scatter the gleams across a
+darkening world. If he didn't mean so very well, he would do infinitely
+better. However, he--"
+
+"Is Brenton," the doctor interposed quietly. "What is more, he will be
+Brenton till the end of time. He even may get worse, by way of natural
+reaction from the strain he was under with his wife. He steadied to
+that better than I hoped, steadied to the baby's death, and steadied to
+the reproaches she considerately heaped on him for her parting gift."
+
+"Reproaches?"
+
+"Yes. She told him that he was to blame for the whole situation; that,
+if he hadn't run amok, she would be jogging contentedly along the path
+of ancestral Calvinism. Moreover, the fact that there is more than a
+grain of truth in her contention doesn't lessen the sting that it has
+left behind. Now, as a natural consequence, the strain over, he is
+letting go entirely. He is made like that. Unless we want him to go to
+pieces utterly, we shall either have to invoke the aid of circumstance,
+or else bring him up with a round turn, ourselves."
+
+"How?" the professor queried flatly. "A man in his position is not
+amenable to discipline."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that." The doctor chuckled. "I am a trustee, you
+know."
+
+"Then he'll resign."
+
+"Not a bit of it. He may threaten it, may talk grand and elevated
+nonsense concerning freedom of speech and all the rest of it. When it
+comes to resignation, though, he will draw in his horns. His life is in
+that laboratory of yours."
+
+"And in his students?"
+
+"No. There's the trouble. It's the idea itself he's after, not its
+growing grip upon the world at large."
+
+"Then what makes him----" The professor paused for the fitting word.
+
+The doctor supplied it, and remorselessly.
+
+"Explatterate? Because it's a part of him to talk forth his imaginings,
+and, just at the present hour, he lacks all proper outlet but his
+class. Something has gone bad inside the man; no wonder, though, when
+one thinks of all that he has gone through. Even you, Opdyke, will
+never know the worst of that. Still, we shall have to put some sort of
+brake upon him; he can't go on like this."
+
+For a little while, the professor smoked in silence.
+
+"Can't you warn him unofficially, Keltridge?" he asked then.
+
+"That he is disgracing the department?"
+
+"No. That he is wrecking his final chance to amount to anything that's
+practical? That, if he holds on here, he must keep within some sort of
+limits in the things he says? That, if he lets go this present
+opportunity, he'll turn into the worst of all things, a mental
+derelict?"
+
+The doctor groaned at the suggestion.
+
+"Opdyke, I'll be hanged if I'll put in all my time, playing
+intellectual wet-nurse to Scott Brenton! I've served my turn. If ever
+he began to cut his wisdom teeth, it's time he was about it."
+
+The professor took up the metaphor and cast it back upon the doctor.
+
+"A good many babies die of teething," he said. "I've heard you say,
+yourself, that it was the one time in all a man's life when he was most
+dependent on the ministrations of the doctor."
+
+The doctor rose and straightened up his shoulders.
+
+"Fairly caught," he confessed. "Well, I'll do my best. Meanwhile, how
+is Reed?"
+
+"Too busy to think much about himself."
+
+"Not overworking?" the doctor questioned sharply.
+
+"No. At least, not if his mental condition is any index to his
+physical. He is eager as a boy over the way his work is coming in. Did
+I tell you he has an assistant coming, day after to-morrow? Poor little
+Dennison has been swamped, for two weeks, in the rising tide of things
+that he knew nothing at all about. I must say he's been heroic in his
+efforts to help Reed out."
+
+The doctor nodded.
+
+"Dolph is a good sort. In the last analysis, he is not unlike Reed;
+they have the same staying power, the same trick of hating to take
+themselves in earnest. Still, for Reed's sake as well as Dolph's, I'm
+glad a trained assistant is coming. In fact, I might say I am glad on
+my own account."
+
+"You?"
+
+The doctor laughed.
+
+"Yes. I've had Dolph at all hours, tearing his hair in my laboratory,
+while I tried to coach him. I do think, for a boy brought up on
+belles-lettres, he's made a decent showing as assistant mineralogist. I
+like Dolph. He's an all-round good fellow."
+
+The professor laid aside his pipe; then he looked up keenly.
+
+"He's at your house often?" he inquired.
+
+The doctor read his old friend like a large-print page. Reading, he
+straightway became impenetrable.
+
+"Yes. He drops in rather often," he assented. "Of course, he knows I am
+a good deal interested in Reed's new venture. Wonderful, isn't it, the
+way it has turned out so well? If only Brenton had one quarter of his
+steady grip!"
+
+But, for the present, steady grip was the one thing Brenton lacked.
+Indeed, watching the recent chaos of his domestic life, one could
+scarcely wonder. As the doctor had said, reaction was bound to come. It
+had been no small upsetting, too, the saying farewell to his
+association with Saint Peter's Parish. The sudden reversal of his
+collar buttons was, in a sense, typical of the sudden reversal of all
+his habits of thought and life. His grip had been loosening, during
+many previous months; the sudden change in his responsibilities
+appeared to have relaxed it utterly.
+
+In the broadest sense, Brenton's old work, like his new, had been
+teaching. Now, however, the enthusiasm of his gospel was possessing him
+completely, a gospel, nowadays, solely of the science which, heretofore,
+threading through and through the fabric of his sermons, had of
+necessity been juggled to the likeness of the Book of Revelation. Now
+that he could set it forth in all its nakedness, it seemed to Brenton
+more than ever like the Book of Revelation. Day after day, his
+enthusiasm for his theme increased its pace, threw off the bridle of
+hard, concrete fact, ran to the speculative limits of its course, and
+then ran past them. By the first of May, Brenton's lectures had made
+themselves one of the features of the college world; but, by the same
+token, they had ceased to be lectures upon chemistry, and had become
+harangues upon every phase of the allied sciences, harangues which ran
+through the entire gamut of abstract investigation, and came to rest at
+last upon the pair of finite questions: _Whence?_ and _Whither?_
+
+And, by the first of May, the student world was all agog, seeking to
+answer those questions flatly and quite off-hand, instead of waiting
+for experience of life to give the answer for them. Brenton, meantime,
+was becoming ten times the force he had been at Saint Peter's; the only
+trouble lay in the fact that now his force was, not formative, but
+deformative.
+
+"He's making himself a reputation, fast enough," Dolph Dennison said,
+one day. "How much good he is accomplishing, though, is another
+question."
+
+To Dolph's surprise, Olive opposed him.
+
+"Isn't there always good in simple, downright sincerity?" she queried.
+
+"Not a bit of it," Dolph assured her bluntly, for a certain talk
+between them, weeks before, a talk disastrous to the best of Dolph's
+plans for life, had in no sense put an end to their good friendship.
+"Sincerity itself is nothing. It's the thing one gets sincere about."
+Then, without waiting for an answer, "What a woman you are, Olive!" he
+said.
+
+"Because I stand up for Mr. Brenton?"
+
+"Because, down in your secret heart, you rather admire him for his
+confounded weaknesses." Dolph spoke with increasing bluntness.
+
+"Not for his weaknesses, Dolph. The man is plucky and sincere. For the
+sake of the things that he believes are true, he will give up, has
+given up, more than most of us will ever gain."
+
+Dolph plunged his fists into his pockets.
+
+"Hang it all, Olive! Do be concrete," he bade her.
+
+"I will, if I can," she said fearlessly. "It's only that the things
+themselves aren't too concrete."
+
+"No." Dolph spoke incisively. "I should say they aren't. Olive look
+here. Don't get your values muddled, at this stage of the game."
+
+Despite their friendship, she looked up at him haughtily.
+
+"What do you mean, Dolph?"
+
+For a minute, he stared down at her, smiling slightly and with a look
+in his eyes that nullified the frank brutality of his next words.
+
+"Don't get mawkish over Brenton, Olive, just because he is a pitiful
+weakling who, in spite of all his good intentions, has made a
+consistent mess of everything he's tried to do. Because a man is weak,
+he isn't necessarily more lovable. Because he has an incurable disease,
+he isn't, of necessity, any more a subject for idolatry. No; I don't
+mean that to lap over on to Opdyke, either. If ever a man was healthy,
+Opdyke is that man. But Brenton isn't. His logic and his conscience
+both are full of bacteria, bad little bacteria that swim around and
+mess things. He may pull out of it, of course, and make something in
+the end. Then, you can set him up on a pedestal and stick flowers in
+his fair hair. For the present, though, do keep sane about him, and
+deplore him, not admire."
+
+"Aren't you a little hard on him, Dolph?" Olive asked steadily,
+although her cheeks were burning with the truth of his implied accusal.
+
+"No; I'm not."
+
+There came a short pause. Then,--
+
+"I am very sorry for him," Olive said a little obstinately.
+
+"Be sorry, then. Be just as sorry as you can. But, for heaven's sake,
+don't tell him so," Dolph retorted rather mercilessly. "If he's ever
+going to amount to anything, he must be brought up with a round turn,
+not coddled and treated as a victim of untoward circumstance. If he
+behaves like this over a growing pain in his theology, what do you
+suppose he'd do in Opdyke's place?"
+
+Olive struggled to regain her hauteur.
+
+"The cases aren't parallel, Dolph," she said. "One is a physical
+matter; the other concerns the spirit."
+
+Once again Dolph paused and looked down at her intently. Then,--
+
+"Which is which?" he queried. "No; don't get testy, Olive. I'm not
+producing any brief for Opdyke. In fact, he doesn't need one; we both
+of us know already what he stands for. But I do hate to see a girl like
+you go off her head about such a man as Brenton, a man with a Christian
+Science wife and a thrilling voice and speaking eyes: all deadly assets
+for a misunderstood ex-preacher. No; I do not like Brenton. He's not my
+sort. Neither, for the fact of it, is he your sort."
+
+Olive compressed her lips.
+
+"I may help to make him so," she said.
+
+"Best let him make himself; he's had too many formative fingers in his
+pie, already. Besides," Dolph's lips curled into an irrepressible
+smile; "how do you know it would be for his advantage?"
+
+For one instant, Olive struggled with her pique. Then she cast it off,
+and looked up at Dolph with her old smile.
+
+"You hit hard, Dolph," she told him; "but I'm not sure you aren't in
+the right of it, after all. I like Mr. Brenton. I am sorry for him;
+perhaps it has muddled my values, as you call it, to be on the inside
+circle of his advisers. Still, there is something to be said upon the
+other side. You can't comprehend a man like Mr. Brenton, if you try."
+
+"Why not? Not that I've tried over much, though," Dolph added, in hasty
+confession.
+
+"It wouldn't have done you any good, if you had tried," Olive assured
+him flatly. "You haven't a single point in common. By ancestry and
+training, you're as unlike as a Zulu and an Eskimo. You began at about
+the point where Mr. Brenton, if he's lucky, will leave off. Your
+great-great-grandparents settled once for all the questions that he's
+agonizing over now. Naturally, you don't remember their struggles, and
+so you can't see why his should take it out of him, any more than you
+can see why a personable man like him ever could have married--"
+
+"What your father aptly terms the She-Gargoyle?" Dolph inquired. "No; I
+can't. But then the question arises promptly, how can you?"
+
+Olive smiled a little sadly. Loath though she was to acknowledge it to
+Dolph, of late she had been finding out that comprehension does not
+always make for full approval.
+
+"As you say, Dolph," she told him; "it's the woman of me. After our own
+fashion, we every one of us are natural nurses; we know when our
+menfolk are in pain."
+
+"Not always, Olive." Dolph spoke sadly.
+
+"Yes, Dolph, we do. Hard as it is, though, sometimes we have to admit
+we have no cure for that especial pain. Still, you can be quite sure
+that it isn't easy for us to turn away and leave it, unhealed and
+aching." Then she threw off the little allegory, and once more spoke
+with spirit. "Dolph, we're created in mental couples, I suspect. Much
+as I care for Reed, it was you who had the insight to plan how he could
+make his life over into something besides the bare existence we all
+were dreading. In the same way, I may be the one to take in the tragedy
+of Mr. Brenton's indeterminate existence, and make it just a little
+lighter, if only by my understanding. Anyway, I mean to try."
+
+She turned in across the lawn, leaving Dolph to stare after her
+retreating figure with no small anxiety.
+
+"Blast the understanding!" he said profanely. "And then, blast the
+preacher!"
+
+The poor preacher, however, for preacher still he was, in spite of the
+reversal of his collar fastenings, was feeling himself already blasted.
+He had been spending a long hour in the doctor's laboratory; and the
+doctor, for the once, had turned his back upon his pans and trays of
+cultures, and lavished his entire attention on his visitor.
+
+"It's just here, Brenton," he said quietly, after an hour of argument;
+"you can do one of two things: you can keep to your text and teach
+those girls straight chemistry; or--"
+
+Brenton faced him squarely, squarely capped the sentence with a single
+word.
+
+"Resign."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You mean you think I am a failure in my teaching?"
+
+"No. Your teaching is all right. You are a born chemist and a born
+teacher. It's your infernal preaching I object to," the doctor told him
+unexpectedly.
+
+"My preaching?"
+
+"Yes. You employ your pulpit methods in your classes. You take a
+chemical text, and then turn and twist it into any sort of a
+metaphysical conclusion that appeals to you at the minute. No; wait! I
+am talking. Science is not equivocal, Brenton. It's as downright and
+determinate as A+B. It's what we know; not what we think we ought to
+think about the things we know. And it's science you are there to
+teach, not glittering abstractions having to do with man's latter end.
+The fact is, you've spent so long in trying to subject your theology to
+scientific proof that, now you're surfeited with science, you are
+trying to use it as a feeder to your theologic fires."
+
+"Not consciously," Brenton objected, as a flush crept up across his
+cheeks. "I have meant--"
+
+The doctor interrupted, but not unkindly.
+
+"Consciously or unconsciously, it's all one, Brenton, as concerns the
+output. You must bridle your scientific imagination and your tongue, or
+else you'll have the whole college by the ears. For the present, you
+are letting off harmless rockets. Before you know it, though, you'll be
+dynamiting the whole establishment. Best go slow."
+
+Brenton attempted one last stand.
+
+"Have I any right to go slow, doctor, when there's a principle
+involved? Have I any right to suppress eternal truths--"
+
+Then the doctor lost his temper.
+
+"Eternal pollywogs!" he burst out. "Man, you're daft. Who told you what
+truths are eternal? Who told you where science ends, and where theology
+begins? Who told you what we mean, when we say _provable_? For two
+thousand years, and then some more, we have been slowly sifting down a
+whole mass of ill-assorted beliefs into two great facts: Creator and
+created. For practical purposes, isn't that all we need to know? Isn't
+it all that we any of us can grasp: the surety that the Creative Mind
+would never have taken the trouble to fashion us, in the first place if
+he hadn't put inside us all the needful germs of progress, all the
+needful intellect to grasp the evident duty that lies just ahead? What
+else, then, do you need? No. Don't try to talk about it. Just go out
+and take a good, long walk in the fresh air, and forget your latter end
+in the more important concerns of deep breathing. You are getting
+disgustingly round-shouldered. Good bye. And, by the way, I'll tell
+Olive you will be back here to dinner."
+
+But Brenton, going on his way, was totally oblivious to the doctor's
+sage counsel as to the merits of deep breathing. Neither did he realize
+in the least the splendid optimism of the stern old doctor's creed. For
+the hour, optimism was quite beyond his ken. He only realized that his
+own world had gone bad; that failure awaited him at every turn, not a
+downright and practical failure, either, but a nebulous and
+indeterminate futility. His life had been nothing but one restless
+struggle to arrive at something finite, something which should satisfy
+alike his heart and reason. Instead of gaining the one thing, it seemed
+to him that all had been lost. His present existence was as focusless
+as an eye after its lens has been extracted. His past had been opaque,
+his future would be permanently blurred. And for what good had been all
+the pain? It would have been far better, far more sane, if he had clung
+stoutly to the flaming horns of his hereditary Calvinism. Infinitely
+better to feel their scorching touch than to drift into a state of
+apathy past any feeling! And Brenton wondered vaguely whether he ever
+would feel anything again, anything, that is, as a personal issue,
+rather than as a scrap of the great world-plan. Most things, nowadays,
+left him conscious of being aloof, remote. Even the going away of his
+wife. Even the death of--He pulled himself up short. Not the baby's
+death. That was still personal, still very personal; personal was the
+message of those little waving hands. What did the baby see? Something
+denied for ever to his adult and doubting eyes?
+
+Forgetful of the doctor's invitation to come back to dine, Brenton at
+twilight found himself upon the long white bridge, his elbows on the
+rail, his eyes upon the darkening surface of the river, as it swept
+down upon him from out the purpling hills. As of old, its mystery held
+him, the mystery of its ceaseless coming, the mystery of its ceaseless
+going on and on, until it lost all individual existence in the
+soundless, boundless sea. To-night, in the apathy which held his senses
+in subjection, he watched it through the dying twilight, until it
+ceased to be to him a river, but appeared to him as an embodiment of
+life itself, coming, coming, coming down to him out of the purpling
+distance, going, going, going down away from him into the deepening
+shadows. And then the light died, and darkness crept across it all, and
+then--extinction.
+
+Next morning, he arranged it with Professor Opdyke that, for the
+present, the other assistant should take over all of his lectures,
+while he himself would put in his time inside the laboratory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
+
+
+Dolph, being Dolph, spoke out his fears to Opdyke. Dolph, being a
+rhetorician, approached his subject cornerwise, however.
+
+"I wish to heaven you'd fall in love with Olive, Opdyke," he said
+moodily, next day.
+
+Reed, looking up from the chaos of letters that were littering his
+couch, gave a short laugh.
+
+"So that I could properly present my sympathy to you?" he queried, as a
+faint colour stole up across his cheeks.
+
+Dolph dropped his rhetoric, and went bluntly to the point.
+
+"No; so that you could obliterate Brenton's image from her mind."
+
+"What do you mean, Dennison?" Reed spoke sternly.
+
+Dolph threw himself back in his chair and answered at the ceiling.
+
+"I am not sure I mean anything at all. Olive has sense enough for a
+dozen, and Brenton is a married man, with a vampire for a wife."
+
+Reed cut in with a question, which showed plainly to Dolph how little
+he cared to discuss Dolph's fears concerning Olive.
+
+"Does anybody hear anything from the wife?"
+
+"I don't, thank heaven!" Dolph assured him piously. "I did hear my
+sister-in-law explaining to a visitor that Mrs. Brenton was very busy
+in Boston. How she knew it; or whether she made it up for
+conversational purposes, I don't know. Neither do I know how long it
+takes to get one's self into commission as a healer. Doesn't Brenton
+ever say anything about her?"
+
+"Not to me. Of course, it's not a subject where I like to be asking
+questions; and I suppose, for the same reason, he hates to open it up,
+himself."
+
+"Naturally." Dolph's tone was dry. "Reed, who killed that baby?"
+
+Opdyke raised his brows.
+
+"I'm not the medical examiner, Dennison; I'm not obliged to say what I
+think about it," he returned.
+
+Dolph sat up and faced his friend.
+
+"I am, then. Opdyke, if it hadn't been a case of his own rector's
+family, Doctor Keltridge would have carried the matter to the courts."
+
+"Did Olive tell you?"
+
+"Olive doesn't tell things of that sort," Dolph said conclusively.
+"She's her father's own child." Then, of a sudden, he returned to his
+original charge. "Opdyke, why don't you think a little more about Olive
+Keltridge?" he demanded.
+
+"Because I think quite enough of her, as it is," Reed answered.
+
+"Of her, but not about her," Dolph said moodily. "Of course, if I could
+get her for my own wife, I wouldn't be giving you this advice. I've
+proved I can't, though--"
+
+Reed interrupted.
+
+"Girls have been known to change their minds," he said.
+
+In spite of his sentimental regrets, Dolph laughed outright.
+
+"If you had been present at our interview, you wouldn't have predicted
+any change in this case. Olive was--well, just as she always is, the
+soul of downright niceness; but she managed to leave me quite convinced
+once and for all that I might as well have wooed the woman in the moon.
+And, by Jove," Dolph's voice dropped to a confidential murmur; "now
+it's all over, I begin to think that she was right. It was a nasty
+half-hour for both of us; but we've come out of it, ripping good
+friends and without a sentimental regret to our names."
+
+"Speaks well for Olive."
+
+"Doesn't it? It's left me caring for her a long way more than ever,
+only not in the accepted-suitor sort of fashion. That's the reason I
+hate to see her drifting about, all at loose ends."
+
+"Dennison," Reed spoke with masterful abruptness; "would you mind doing
+a letter or two at my dictation? Duncan is busy in the laboratory, this
+afternoon; and these things must go out on to-night's mail." His voice
+was steady, as he spoke; but in his brave brown eyes Dolph recognized
+the old-time harried, hunted look which he had hoped would never come
+again. Later, the letters done, Dolph went away without waiting for
+more conversation. For a singularly happy-go-lucky mortal, Dolph's
+instincts were to be by no means distrusted.
+
+Dolph's going was only just in time to prevent his meeting Olive who
+came around the curve of the street, just as he was leaving the Opdyke
+grounds. He waved his hat to her from afar, and she answered his
+greeting; but neither of them changed the direction of his steps. They
+saw each other often enough, in any case; and it was an accepted fact
+between them that Reed's calls were better taken singly, as a rule,
+than in pairs.
+
+However, as she went into Reed's room, that day, Olive began to have
+her doubts how long the old rule would hold good. Reed was increasingly
+busy, nowadays. Letters and drawings, photographs and samples of ores
+were piling in upon him from all parts of the country. The old phrase,
+indeed, was gaining a new fulfilment: the mountain was coming to
+Mahomet in all literalness. Olive had long since become accustomed to
+finding the room littered with the debris of much consulting, had grown
+accustomed to having her trivial gossip interrupted by the advent of
+fresh letters and a new supply of specimen ores. She had grown glib in
+reading off the unfamiliar phrasing of the letters, facile in writing
+down the totally unspellable words of Opdyke's dictated replies. In all
+of this, however, she had been made to feel aware that she herself
+stood first to Reed, his work stood second.
+
+Not that Olive for one instant would have allowed herself consciously
+to become jealous of Reed's work. She was too sane and generous for
+that, too happy in the change it was making in Reed's existence. He was
+alert and enthusiastic now, where aforetime he was passive and plucky.
+His brown eyes snapped, not gleamed expressively. In short, the new
+assistant was finding out, to his extreme surprise, that his position
+was no sentimental sinecure, that, coming to be hands and feet to
+supplement an active scientific brain, he was likely to work more
+strenuously, more to the purpose, than he had done in the New York
+office of the brilliant specialist who had sent him up to Reed.
+
+It was several weeks now since Dolph had made his crisp suggestion that
+Reed take his profession into bed with him. Even in that little time,
+the change was measureless; to all practical intents and purposes, the
+dying had come into a new life. The life, too, was by no means wholly
+intellectual. As Reed's professional enthusiasm grew stronger, his
+bodily gain apparently kept pace with it. To be sure, the lower half of
+him was totally, irrevocably dead. Nevertheless, by sheer, energetic
+will, Opdyke was making the upper half of his body do duty for the
+whole, was gaining a control over his crippled lower limbs that, six
+months before, he would have pronounced impossible.
+
+With Ramsdell to pull and pry him to position, nowadays, he sat leaning
+up against the pillows on his bed, for an hour or two of every morning.
+The effort brought the beads of sweat out upon his forehead; but he
+took that a good deal as a matter of course, talked bravely of a
+rolling chair and a lift built on the corner of the house and even, a
+little later on, of a motor car and of a down-town office. Best of all,
+the old haunted look had left his eyes for ever. At least, so Olive had
+believed, until that day. To-day, despite his smile of greeting, the
+old expression was peering out at her, and she felt her hopes chilling
+within her at the sight.
+
+"What is it, Reed?" she asked him, after a few minutes of trivial
+conversation. "Something has gone wrong."
+
+"Not with me," he told her quickly. "In fact, things are very right.
+Ask Ramsdell."
+
+"But you look--"
+
+"How?" His laugh awaited her final word.
+
+"Worried," she told him flatly. "The way you used to look, last
+winter."
+
+"No reason that I should," he reassured her. "Things are going
+swimmingly. Now that my new assistant has rallied from the shock of his
+surroundings and come to a realizing sense that I prefer technical
+journals to tracts, he is proving a grand success. He is going to be of
+immense help; and I needed him, now that work is piling in. I'm hoping,
+though, your father can plan some way of giving me a little better use
+of my arms. There's a loose screw in there that he ought to tighten."
+
+"Reed," Olive spoke thoughtfully; "you are rather unusual."
+
+With some effort, he kept all edge of bitterness out of his voice, as
+he replied,--
+
+"I certainly trust so, Olive. It wouldn't be an advantage to humanity
+at large to have this a normal state of things. Still, it might be
+worse, lots worse. I'm not nearly so soggy as I was. Which reminds me:
+do you mind going to the bottom of that heap of letters and taking out
+the square gray one. Yes. That's it. Now read it. I've saved it up for
+your delight."
+
+There came a silence, broken only by the noise of unfolded paper. Then
+Olive looked up.
+
+"Reed! The--"
+
+"Don't swear, Olive," he admonished her, and now his eyes were wholly
+mirthful.
+
+"I wasn't going to. I was only hunting for a suitable epithet. How does
+she dare?"
+
+"Dare take unto herself the glory of what she calls my incipient cure?
+I wish I thought it was that; but vertebrae are vertebrae, in spite of
+all the Christian Scientists in all creation. As for her claim, though,
+she's got us there, Olive. One can't well prove an alibi, when it's a
+case of absent treatment. Still, I must say I like her nerve."
+
+"When did this thing come?" And Olive cast the letter from her, with a
+sudden fury which, for the instant, downed her sense of humour utterly.
+
+"Only to-day. I had meant to try a chair, to-morrow; but, in view of
+her predictions, I'll be hanged if I will. She would go to cackling
+forth that it was all her doing. How do you suppose she knew anything
+about me, anyway?"
+
+"Spies, probably. Those people will stoop to anything to carry on their
+cause," Olive said tartly.
+
+"Then one ought to feel a sneaking admiration for their _esprit du
+corps_, at least. In fact, if you translate the phrase literally
+enough, it holds the very nubbin of their whole belief. But I hope you
+noted the clause concerning Brenton. I am glad she even feels so much
+of interest in him."
+
+Olive settled back in her chair, and yielded up her creed of married
+life briefly, trenchantly.
+
+"Reed, if I owned a husband, I'd focus my mind upon his breakfasts and
+his buttonholes and his entertainment of an evening. That's what men
+want, not hifalutin' mind cures delivered at long range." Then she
+repented. "Still, I'm not fair to Mrs. Brenton, Reed. She doesn't
+interest me in the least."
+
+"Does Brenton?" Reed asked. And then he shut his teeth, as he waited
+for the reply.
+
+The reply, when it came, was direct.
+
+"Yes, Reed; he does, intensely. He is a mass of brilliant possibilities
+that all are going wrong. Moreover, I can't help a feeling I could help
+him, if I would. I know that sometimes I have seen farther inside his
+mind than even he knows, and it has given me an odd feeling of
+responsibility over him, a responsibility that I can't see just how to
+carry out." Suddenly she paused. "Reed," she said; "you're not as well,
+to-day. What is the trouble? Are you overdoing; or has Ramsdell let you
+strain yourself?"
+
+He forced a smile back to his lips, although his eyes were haggard.
+
+"It's nothing, Olive, really." He spoke as lightly as he could. "Your
+imaginings concerning Brenton have lapped over on to me; that's all."
+
+She felt the rebuke in his words, knew within herself how undeserved it
+was, and, rather than confess the truth, arose in her own defence.
+
+"Not imaginings, Reed," she said, and her self-protective dignity yet
+hurt him. "Now and then we women do have intuitions that are
+trustworthy. This, I think, is one of them. And Mr. Brenton needs all
+the help he can get, out of any sort of source."
+
+Reed shut his teeth upon his hurt, until he could command his voice
+once more. Then,--
+
+"I agree with you there, Olive," he assented. "Moreover, I wrote to
+Whittenden about him, a week ago. If any one can be of use, it will be
+Whittenden; he always knows what tonic it is best to prescribe. Must
+you go?" He looked up at her appealingly. Then the same appeal came
+into his voice, set it to throbbing with an accent wholly new to
+Olive's ears. "Olive," he said; "you're not going to misunderstand me,
+not going to allow Brenton to come in between us?"
+
+Suddenly the girl went white; suddenly she bent down to rest her hand
+on his, in one of the few, few touches she had ever given his fingers
+since the day he had been brought home and laid there in his room,
+powerless to withdraw himself from too insistent human contacts. Her
+voice, when she spoke, had a throb that matched his own.
+
+"Never, Reed!" she said.
+
+A moment later, she was gone, leaving Opdyke there alone, to wonder
+and, wondering, to worry.
+
+Two afternoons later, Duncan, the new assistant, brought up a message
+from the laboratory. Brenton would be at leisure, soon after four.
+Might he come up? That was just after luncheon. Therefore two hours
+would intervene, two hours for a quiet going over of certain things
+that Reed Opdyke felt it was for him alone to say, certain measures for
+Olive's safety which he alone should take. Indeed, there was no other
+man who stood, to Olive's mind, so nearly in a brother's place; no
+other man, it seemed to Opdyke, who owned one half so good a right to
+test the ground on which she stood, to assure himself that she might
+venture forward safely.
+
+Opdyke was no sentimentalist. Nevertheless, he recognized all that it
+might portend when such a girl as Olive Keltridge, the soul of sanity
+and downrightness, talked about her comprehension of a man like
+Brenton. Moreover, Opdyke was no gossip. Nevertheless, he had not
+failed to hear a certain amount of speculation as to the possibilities
+of Brenton's seeking a divorce. Sought, there was no question of his
+getting it. Katharine's desertion was an established fact past all
+gainsaying.
+
+And, if he sought it and won it, what then? Merely the helping him
+become as well worth while, as well worth Olive's while, as it was
+possible for any man to be. This was the task which Reed had set
+himself; the task for which he was bracing himself, during those two
+endless hours; the task for the accomplishment of which he was
+resolved, if need be, to tear away the coverings which, up to now, he
+had held fast above certain of the reticences of his own life. The
+tearing would be sure to hurt; but what of that? Olive, given the
+opportunity, would have done as much for him.
+
+The afternoon lengthened interminably, and the clock was striking the
+half-hour, when Brenton finally came up the stairs. His face was grave,
+as he greeted his old friend, his eyes a little overcast and heavy.
+
+Reed jerked his head in the direction of a chair.
+
+"Sit down," he said hospitably; "and then fill up your pipe. Duncan
+doesn't smoke, worse luck; and I find I miss the old aroma. It's rather
+like incense offered to the ghost of my old self."
+
+His accent was trivial, and Brenton, listening to the apparently
+careless words, could form no notion of the pains that had gone into
+their choosing.
+
+"Your new self, I should say. It's astounding, Opdyke, the way you've
+picked yourself out of the rut and gone rushing ahead again."
+
+"With a difference, though," Reed told him bluntly. "Is the jar full?
+You like the kind?"
+
+"Yes, thanks." And Brenton filled his pipe. After a minute's puffing,
+"After all, Opdyke, you have pretty well minimized the difference," he
+observed.
+
+"Thanks to Ramsdell and Duncan, yes. They have been wonderful props,
+and it's good to get on my professional legs again, whatever my bodily
+ones may do for me. Meanwhile, how are things going with you?"
+
+Brenton smoked in silence for a minute. Then,--
+
+"The wraith of my departed priestly calling forbids me to phrase my
+answer just as I'd like best to do," he said.
+
+Reed nodded.
+
+"So bad as that? What is the matter now?"
+
+"It's hard to specify. I seem to have run myself aground."
+
+"Pull off, then," Reed advised.
+
+"No craft in sight to tow me."
+
+Reed shut his teeth.
+
+"Brenton, that has been your trouble from the start. You've always been
+drifting, anchor up, ready for a tow. Now hoist your sails and, for the
+Lord's sake, go ahead."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Where! Wherever the chart takes you. What chart? The chart of plain
+duty, man, the duty of an honest citizen to make the most of himself
+and be a little good to humanity at large. No; wait. You've had your
+chances; you can't cry off on that. You had your chance, 'way back in
+college, and you chucked it over. How much more would it have hurt your
+mother to have seen you once for all take up a secular profession, than
+it would to have watched you setting out to preach all the things her
+own religion didn't stand for? You had another chance in Saint Peter's.
+It wasn't a small chance, either. You could have held that church
+together, solid; you could have brought its people to a working assent
+to a practical exposition of their creed that would have kept them busy
+and loyal to their Creator, in doing their duty to their co-created
+fellow men. Instead, you ignored your chance to keep them busy on
+things that would help on the world we live in, and spent all your
+energies in tangling up your notions of the world we came out of, and
+the world we, some day, are going into. As mental gymnastics, it was
+very pretty to watch; as a useful employment for a man who calls
+himself a pastor of souls, it wasn't worth a rush."
+
+"But a man can't help his thoughts," Brenton expostulated suddenly.
+
+"Can't he?" Reed whitened. "Brenton," he asked gravely; "don't you
+suppose that there have been times on times, since they lugged me up
+these stairs, that, if I had let myself go, I wouldn't have turned my
+face to the wall and cursed, not only the whole plan of creation, but
+the Creator himself? Times on times that, if I hadn't held tight to a
+few rudimentary notions that I took in with my mother's milk, notions
+about the decent and square thing to do for the God that made you, I
+wouldn't have tested the logic of your doubtings with a dose of
+cyanide? I tell you a man can help his thoughts. I tell you a man can
+hold to his beliefs. He can wonder about the petty things as much as he
+chooses, and it never does him one bit of harm. But the final great
+belief of all, that there is a wise Creator back of things, and that we
+owe Him at least as much loyal courtesy as we give to the best of our
+brother men: that is something it is in the hands of any man to hold on
+to, if he chooses. Brenton, I hate to lecture you," and, with a sudden
+gesture brimful of appealing for forgiveness, for loyal comprehension,
+Reed stretched out his hand; "but you have got to bring yourself up
+with a round turn. In some way or other, you have missed your chances.
+You have gone rushing off for shiny butterflies, when you ought to have
+stopped at home and milked the cows. Something," he smiled; "Whittenden
+says it was my downfall, set you to asking questions that you were too
+nearsighted to answer. Instead of sticking to a few fundamental bits of
+faith, you made yourself a ladder out of theological catchwords,
+clambered up it and kicked out all the rungs, one after another, as you
+climbed. Then you turned dizzy, and lost your grip, and fell all in a
+heap. Brenton, we've had about the same experience, one way or another,
+out of life."
+
+"But you have braced up again and gone ahead," Brenton said slowly.
+
+"So will you, man. That's why I am harrying you now, to start you up
+again. We neither one of us are half through our allotted term of
+years. In simple decency, we've got to play out the game."
+
+"If we can," Brenton interrupted.
+
+"No _if_ about it. We've got it to do. Of course, we can't do it in
+quite the same old way. Be plucky as we can, it's impossible for us to
+deny that we've been scarred--badly; that the scars, some of them, can
+never really heal. Still, as long as we've a year ahead of us and a
+drop of fighting blood inside us--Brenton, it isn't easy; but it's our
+one way to prove we're game."
+
+Then, for a while, the room was very still. At last, Reed spoke once
+more.
+
+"Scott," he said slowly, and the old name held a note of great love;
+"once on a time, you didn't resent it when I told you that old
+Mansfield asked me to take you in hand and show you a few things out of
+my own experience. Don't resent it now. We've been too good friends
+for too many years for that."
+
+Ramsdell's steady step came up the stairs, and Reed went on quite
+simply.
+
+"Then you've heard from Whittenden?"
+
+Brenton, pulling himself back to the present, looked up sharply at the
+question.
+
+"How did you know?"
+
+"He wrote me. What does he suggest?"
+
+"Didn't he tell you that? He wants me to go down to him, and take over
+some of his settlement work."
+
+"Shall you go?"
+
+Brenton shook his head.
+
+"It's out of the question, Opdyke. I only wish I could, for I am not of
+much use to your father, I'm afraid. Still, hereafter--Well, perhaps
+you've put new force into me by your admonitions." But his voice broke
+a little over the intentionally careless words.
+
+Opdyke ignored the allusion.
+
+"Then why not go to Whittenden?" he inquired, as carelessly as he was
+able.
+
+Brenton arose and stood, erect, looking down at his old friend
+intently, as if anxious that Opdyke should lose no fragment of his
+meaning.
+
+"Because, now more than ever," he said, a little bit insistently; "I
+feel it would be impossible for me to go away from the college. To
+change now would be a confession of another failure. If I am to make
+good at all, it must be here and soon. Besides," and now his accent
+changed; "I must stay on here and keep my house open, Opdyke. The time
+may come, when Mrs. Brenton wishes to come back to me. If it does come,
+she must find everything ready, waiting for her to make her realize
+that, at last, she is once more at home."
+
+And then, as Ramsdell came inside the room, he turned and went away
+down the stairs. Watching him, Reed Opdyke could not but feel reassured
+on his account. Whatever his anxieties for himself and Olive, he could
+not fail to realize that, unknown to any of them, looking on, the
+steadying processes in Brenton had begun.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
+
+
+All the world admitted that the summer was a trying one, that year. All
+the world, with half a dozen exceptions, turned migratory, in the hope
+of finding better weather farther on. The exceptions included the
+Opdykes who stayed at home on Reed's account; the Keltridges who
+remained in mercy to those of the doctor's patients who were too poor
+to pay the price of a railway ticket to the seashore, even for a day;
+and Brenton who never, since his wife had left him, had slept a night
+away from home. That Katharine would one day come back to him, Brenton
+was so firmly convinced that he saw no need of insisting on his belief
+to other people. It was his one steadfast ambition to keep the home
+always ready to welcome her back; always to keep it as nearly as
+possible as she had left it, so that her home coming might accomplish
+itself without the slightest jar.
+
+In a sense, despite the chasm which had opened out between them, a
+chasm, as he now admitted frankly to himself, in part of his own
+making, despite even the ugly facts surrounding the baby's death,
+Brenton still loved Katharine. Moreover, he still had hours of being
+desperately lonely. Back of it all, though, was his strict adherence to
+the letter of his marriage bond. Whatever came between them, Katharine
+was still his wife; his home was always hers. Whatever other duties lay
+ahead of him, one was constant: to hold himself true to this avowed
+allegiance, to win her back from what seemed to him a passing madness;
+or else, that failing, to take her as she was and forget everything
+else besides the one great fact of her wifehood, of her recent
+motherhood of their dead baby boy. If he held firm to that, and to some
+other things, the future might yet offer untold good to them.
+Meanwhile, he would be ready for any event that came.
+
+The other things to which Brenton, all that summer, was holding firmly,
+had come out of his association with Reed Opdyke. Opdyke, in all
+terseness, had summed up man's whole duty: to play out the game
+uprightly, and, out of loyalty to an all-wise Creator, not to lose
+touch with the present chance in trying to see too many moves ahead.
+The remoter parts of life, so long as they remained remote, would take
+care of themselves. And, in the same way, the problems of the
+after-life, its meanings, could be left unsolved, if not unstudied,
+until the time came when one could take them in a nearer view. Properly
+lived, life was too busy to admit of many questions, anyway. Always
+there were so many useful things to be done that scanty time remained
+for over much philosophizing. And, as for the man knocked down and out,
+whether by spiritual doubting, or black powder, it was for him to
+choose whether he would lie on his back and wallow limply in the dust
+of his emotions, or stiffen himself, ready for new effort.
+
+All through the blazing heat of the worst June ever recorded; all
+through the chill of a cold, wet July, Opdyke preached his doctrine
+with insistence, preached it in season and out. While he preached, he
+practised; often, it must be confessed, a good deal to his own
+detriment. The lift and the rolling chair and the down-town office were
+still in a future which every one, including Reed himself, knew to be
+increasingly nebulous. However, he and Duncan were building up no small
+amount of reputation in their work; and, while the loosened screw of
+which Opdyke had complained to Olive was throwing all the manual toil
+on Duncan, it was an open secret that Opdyke supplied the brains.
+
+However, no amount of professional contentment can quite atone for the
+strain of many sleepless nights; and, more than once that summer,
+Doctor Keltridge had been strongly tempted to call a halt in the whole
+undertaking. Then, at the last minute, he had stayed his prohibition.
+Opdyke, in all surety, was working far beyond his strength. None the
+less, it seemed to the old doctor that there would be a certain cruelty
+in bringing to a sudden halt this sole activity permitted to him, this
+sole means of contact with his old profession. The doctor spent his
+summer between the horns of a dilemma: his disapproval of Reed's
+overworking, his greater disapproval of the need for thrusting Reed
+back into his former impotence. And, to all seeming, there was no
+middle ground. It would have taxed the strength even of a full-bodied
+man to have held together a reputation, under such handicaps as those
+beneath which Reed was working. The doctor grumbled in his throat at
+Ramsdell; but he spoke out no word to Reed. For the present, he was
+well aware, he had power to dominate the situation.
+
+And so the cold, wet July rolled along; and then came an August,
+drearier, more chilly. The sweet New England summer was drowned in a
+cold, raw fog which only broke at intervals into a day of blazing
+sunshine which set all the world a-steam. It was a hideous season, even
+for the prosperous vagrants of society. To Reed, imprisoned in his room
+and in a town empty of all his friends but two or three, it was
+well-nigh insupportable. Brenton dropped in upon him, half a dozen
+times a week, and Olive never missed a day, while Duncan was
+invaluable. Nevertheless, it was plain that the summer was wearing on
+the "puffic' fibbous," although his old-time beauty was bidding fair to
+outlast the malign attacks of fortune. Indeed, to Olive Keltridge, it
+seemed that Opdyke never had been one half so good to look upon as now,
+never one half so virile.
+
+"Most men would be impossible in such a situation," she said to her
+father, one morning in early August. "You would be a caricature, and,
+as for a man like Mr. Brenton--"
+
+"Hush! Speak of angels!" her father warned her. Then, in another tone,
+he added, "Morning, Brenton. You're up early; aren't you?"
+
+But Brenton's face refused to light in answer to the doctor's greeting.
+
+"I've had a telegram from Boston," he said, and his accent was dull,
+monotonous. "Katharine is very ill, pneumonia."
+
+"They have sent for you?"
+
+"Yes. And to hurry."
+
+Olive spoke impetuously.
+
+"I am so sorry. But it may be better than you think."
+
+He looked across at her, as if he had not been aware of her presence
+until she spoke.
+
+"Good morning, Miss Keltridge," he said hastily. "Yes, it may be. In
+pneumonia there's always some hope, till the very last, I imagine. That
+is the reason," he turned back to the doctor; "the reason I've come to
+you. Can you go to Boston with me?"
+
+The doctor swiftly conned his list of cases.
+
+"This noon? Ye--es. But, Brenton," his keen old eyes were infinitely
+kind; "you know it is by no means sure that Mrs. Brenton will let me
+see her."
+
+"I think she will," Brenton said quietly. "She has never been in a
+place like this--" there came a sudden wave of recollection which made
+him glance furtively across at the doctor, then add, "exactly. Besides,
+Catie was always very fond of you."
+
+And Olive, hearing, comprehended once again and, comprehending, gave to
+Brenton a new sort of loyalty which she had heretofore denied him. She
+knew that, in that old-time nickname, coming unbidden to the husband's
+lips, there was the proof that all memory of Katharine's disaffection
+had been wiped out from Brenton's mind, for evermore.
+
+It was early, the next morning, when Olive carried the final bulletins
+to Reed. Her father had just called her up upon the telephone to tell
+her that the end had come. Up to the last of her consciousness,
+Katharine had refused to see him; only the healer and Brenton had been
+allowed inside the room. Then, when she had sunk into the fitful stupor
+which could have only the one ending, Brenton had come to summon him;
+and they had stood together, hand on hand, while the life before them
+ebbed away. It had been a peaceful passing. Just at the very end had
+come a moment of full consciousness, when she had turned to smile up at
+her husband.
+
+"Scott," she said to him; "I'm sorry. But, in the next world, I think
+perhaps you'll understand me just a little better."
+
+And then the earth-light had faded from her eyes and, in its place,
+there had dawned the dazzling recognition of the things that are to be.
+
+Reed listened to it all, in perfect silence. When Olive had finished,--
+
+"Poor old Brenton!" he said slowly. "It was a conjugal I-told-you-so,
+coming back to him as a message out of the misty borderland he's tried
+so hard to penetrate."
+
+Later, that same day, Olive dropped in on Reed again. She was lonely,
+she claimed, without her father, restless and nervous from thinking
+much about the Brentons, wondering what Brenton himself would do. And
+Reed, who had grown eager at her coming, felt his eagerness departing
+while he listened to her second reason. Even his courage recognized the
+fact that there were limits to his strength. It seemed to him quite
+intolerable that he must lie there and smile, and assent politely to
+the divagations of Olive concerning Brenton's future plans. Besides,
+loyal as he was to Olive, Reed was conscious of a little disappointment
+that a girl, even as uncompromisingly downright as she, should be quite
+so prompt in expressing interest in Brenton's future.
+
+But Olive, noticing his reticence, laid it only to the exhaustion of a
+hideously rainy day, and talked on steadily. What Reed did not know
+till later was that her steady monologue was designed to cover up her
+real intention for just a little while, that she might gain time to
+stiffen to the resolution she had taken. The resolution had been
+growing up in her for weeks; it had come to its climax, only that very
+morning, when she had met Ramsdell on the Opdyke steps.
+
+"How is Mr. Opdyke?" she had queried.
+
+Then she had caught her breath at Ramsdell's answer.
+
+"Rather poorly, Miss Keltridge."
+
+She cast a hasty glance upward, to assure herself that Reed's windows
+were not open.
+
+"What do you mean?" she demanded sharply then.
+
+Ramsdell looked down upon her gloomily.
+
+"That I'm uneasy, Miss Keltridge. There's no one thing the matter, and
+yet Mr. Hopdyke does seem to be losing ground. It's 'is ambition runs
+away with all 'is strength. As long as he kept still on his back, 'e
+gained. But now 'e seems to be trying to get hout of bed and leave his
+back be'ind 'im, as that 'ealing woman told him; and, like all of us,
+he isn't meant to cast off his own spinal column, bad as 'tis. His work
+won't 'urt 'im, if he takes it quiet; but, as a nurse trained in the
+Royal 'Ospital, I must hinsist it is bad for any man to try to do
+Delsarte gymnastics on a hempty stomach of a morning."
+
+Despite her consternation, Olive laughed.
+
+"Can't you make him stop it, Ramsdell?"
+
+"Impossible, Miss Keltridge. When it comes to that I'm nothing but
+another man. What Mr. Hopdyke needs now is a woman to manage 'im and
+cocker 'im up a bit. In spite of all his work and that, he's away off
+on 'is nerve."
+
+"How does he show it, Ramsdell?" Olive asked, a little faintly, for
+there was that in the whites of the great black eyes which made her
+painfully aware that Ramsdell was not talking quite at random, and she
+disliked to feel that even those dog-like eyes, devoted though they
+were to Reed, had penetrated the secret of her woman's nature.
+
+Ramsdell's reply refreshed her by its very lack of sentiment.
+
+"When 'e's feeling fit, Miss Keltridge, 'e swears something glorious.
+Nowadays, it's as much as he can do to trump up henergy to let off a
+single damn. There! He's calling!" And Ramsdell vanished in the
+direction of the stairs.
+
+Left to herself, Olive tramped home as if the seven-league boots had
+been upon her feet. Once at home, for some reason only known to
+womankind, she elected to sweep and dust the library with her own
+hands, and then to scour the brasses of the fireplace. Half through the
+second operation, though, she hesitated, paused, stopped short and
+threw aside her cloth and pinafore. Leaving them for the maids to
+discover and gather up at will, she went to her room, arrayed herself
+immaculately and quite regardless of the weather, and once more sallied
+out in search of Reed. While she was going up the Opdyke stairs,
+however, she suddenly became aware that she had nothing to say to him
+which would account for her suddenly renewed desire for his society.
+Accordingly, she talked of Brenton till Reed's soul was weary. Then,
+with a sudden flounce, she brought the talk around to Reed himself.
+
+"How many mines have you added to your list, to-day?" she asked him.
+
+Reed heaved a short sigh of relief, not out of egotism, but merely to
+be freed from further talk concerning Brenton.
+
+"Only one."
+
+"That's unusual. Still, I am rather glad it happens so. Ramsdell is
+convinced that you are working too hard, in this impossible weather."
+
+"Ramsdell is a chronic grumbler," Reed said disloyally. "I'm all right,
+Olive."
+
+She bent forward, her elbows on her knees, and stared down at him
+intently.
+
+"I'm not too sure of that, Reed. You are growing thin, and you look
+tired. No wonder, from what Mr. Duncan has told us. Is it quite worth
+while, though?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"But why?" she urged, with sudden recklessness of any pain her
+insistence might be causing him.
+
+He reddened.
+
+"Let's leave the dead past out of it, Olive. What's the use of going
+over the old ground again? You know my one ambition is to make whatever
+is left of my life a gift worth while."
+
+"Gift?" she queried steadily. "To whom, Reed?"
+
+"Its Creator, when the time comes," he answered, with the slow
+difficulty with which a strong man always touches such a theme. "Who
+else?"
+
+His sudden question, answering as it did to her own thoughts, astounded
+her. Her face flushed, lighted, filled itself with a dazzling radiance
+which, for the moment, Reed was powerless to interpret. For just that
+single moment, Olive caught in her breath and held it. Then,--
+
+"Why, to me," she answered simply. "Reed dear, you have made it
+wonderfully well worth the asking. May I have it for my very own?"
+
+Fifteen minutes later on, Ramsdell came up the stairs. When he had gone
+down them stealthily and tiptoed through the lower hall, he wiped his
+eyes, then blew his nose in raucous triumph.
+
+"The one thing I 'ave halways 'oped would 'appen!" he said
+impressively.
+
+Four days afterward, Brenton came home again, came straight from the
+burial service on the country hillside to take up his old life in the
+wifeless home. As a matter of course, his first evening he spent with
+Opdyke.
+
+Opdyke, looking for change in him, was not disappointed. Change was
+evident, and of a sort for which Opdyke had scarcely dared to hope. Of
+sadness there was curiously little sign; the black band on his sleeve
+was the only outward show of mourning, and Brenton's face explained the
+lack. Even in the few days of his new experience, the old indecision
+seemed to have left his face for ever, and with it much of the old
+sadness. He carried himself more alertly, too, as if, for the future,
+life were too full of purpose to permit of any indecision or delay.
+
+Of his trouble, he said singularly little.
+
+"Poor Catie! She died, loyal to me, and happy in her belief," he told
+Reed briefly. "It was the end she would have chosen for herself. Next
+time we meet each other, though, we shall understand each other better
+and have better patience." And that was all he said, then or
+afterwards. Instead, he congratulated Reed upon his new, great
+happiness.
+
+After a time,--
+
+"Now, shall you go to Whittenden?" Opdyke asked him.
+
+Brenton shook his head.
+
+"No. My place is here. So far, I have never worked out much good from
+any of the chances I've had given me. I'd better do it, here and now,
+without wasting time by any further change. As for the quality of the
+work, Opdyke, I've been thinking things, the past few days. There are
+men in plenty doing their level best to work out God's existence in the
+lives of his created children. For me, I think it's better worth the
+while to try to prove that universal laws exist, and, out of those
+laws, prove God."
+
+And Opdyke nodded briefly, in token of his perfect comprehension.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+Anna Chapin Ray's Novels
+
+
+A Woman with a Purpose. _Frontispiece._ $1.50.
+
+Miss Ray's novel is a careful, thoughtful creation and it commands serious
+consideration from the reader.--_Chicago Tribune._
+
+
+Over the Quicksands. _Frontispiece in Color._ $1.50.
+
+The story is splendidly written and will interest those who like a
+strong story with many dramatic climaxes.--_Boston Globe._
+
+
+Hearts and Creeds. $1.50.
+
+The social, political, and religious life of the people who "mix but
+can never combine," is pictured graphically and attractively in this
+book on Quebec social life.--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._
+
+
+Quickened. $1.50.
+
+The reader's attention is riveted at the outset, and the love affair that
+intertwines gives a strong touch to the book.--_Boston Journal._
+
+
+By the Good Sainte Anne. _Popular Edition._ 75 cents.
+
+Its pictures of life amid the quaintnesses of Canada are
+faithful and entertaining.--_Boston Transcript._
+
+
+The Bridge Builders. $1.50.
+
+The story is clear, vigorous, enjoyable.--_Louisville Evening Post._
+
+
+Ackroyd of the Faculty. $1.50.
+
+The characters are well drawn and true to life.--_Chicago Tribune._
+
+
+The Dominant Strain. _Illustrated._ $1.50.
+
+One cannot lay down the book, nor lose interest in it when the story
+is fairly started.--_Philadelphia Telegram._
+
+                    *      *      *      *      *
+
+LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., _Publishers_
+34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON
+
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