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. _

Read next: Chapter Thirty

Read previous: Chapter Twenty-Eight

Table of content of Brentons


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book