Chapter Eight

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_ "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. _

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