Chapter Twenty-One

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_ 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. _

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