Chapter Twenty

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_ 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." _

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