Chapter Twenty-Three

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_ "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. _

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