Chapter Thirty-One

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_ Dolph, being Dolph, spoke out his fears to Opdyke. Dolph, being a rhetorician, approached his subject cornerwise, however. "I wish to heaven you'd fall in love with Olive, Opdyke," he said moodily, next day. Reed, looking up from the chaos of letters that were littering his couch, gave a short laugh. "So that I could properly present my sympathy to you?" he queried, as a faint colour stole up across his cheeks. Dolph dropped his rhetoric, and went bluntly to the point. "No; so that you could obliterate Brenton's image from her mind." "What do you mean, Dennison?" Reed spoke sternly. Dolph threw himself back in his chair and answered at the ceiling. "I am not sure I mean anything at all. Olive has sense enough for a dozen, and Brenton is a married man, with a vampire for a wife." Reed cut in with a question, which showed plainly to Dolph how little he cared to discuss Dolph's fears concerning Olive. "Does anybody hear anything from the wife?" "I don't, thank heaven!" Dolph assured him piously. "I did hear my sister-in-law explaining to a visitor that Mrs. Brenton was very busy in Boston. How she knew it; or whether she made it up for conversational purposes, I don't know. Neither do I know how long it takes to get one's self into commission as a healer. Doesn't Brenton ever say anything about her?" "Not to me. Of course, it's not a subject where I like to be asking questions; and I suppose, for the same reason, he hates to open it up, himself." "Naturally." Dolph's tone was dry. "Reed, who killed that baby?" Opdyke raised his brows. "I'm not the medical examiner, Dennison; I'm not obliged to say what I think about it," he returned. Dolph sat up and faced his friend. "I am, then. Opdyke, if it hadn't been a case of his own rector's family, Doctor Keltridge would have carried the matter to the courts." "Did Olive tell you?" "Olive doesn't tell things of that sort," Dolph said conclusively. "She's her father's own child." Then, of a sudden, he returned to his original charge. "Opdyke, why don't you think a little more about Olive Keltridge?" he demanded. "Because I think quite enough of her, as it is," Reed answered. "Of her, but not about her," Dolph said moodily. "Of course, if I could get her for my own wife, I wouldn't be giving you this advice. I've proved I can't, though--" Reed interrupted. "Girls have been known to change their minds," he said. In spite of his sentimental regrets, Dolph laughed outright. "If you had been present at our interview, you wouldn't have predicted any change in this case. Olive was--well, just as she always is, the soul of downright niceness; but she managed to leave me quite convinced once and for all that I might as well have wooed the woman in the moon. And, by Jove," Dolph's voice dropped to a confidential murmur; "now it's all over, I begin to think that she was right. It was a nasty half-hour for both of us; but we've come out of it, ripping good friends and without a sentimental regret to our names." "Speaks well for Olive." "Doesn't it? It's left me caring for her a long way more than ever, only not in the accepted-suitor sort of fashion. That's the reason I hate to see her drifting about, all at loose ends." "Dennison," Reed spoke with masterful abruptness; "would you mind doing a letter or two at my dictation? Duncan is busy in the laboratory, this afternoon; and these things must go out on to-night's mail." His voice was steady, as he spoke; but in his brave brown eyes Dolph recognized the old-time harried, hunted look which he had hoped would never come again. Later, the letters done, Dolph went away without waiting for more conversation. For a singularly happy-go-lucky mortal, Dolph's instincts were to be by no means distrusted. Dolph's going was only just in time to prevent his meeting Olive who came around the curve of the street, just as he was leaving the Opdyke grounds. He waved his hat to her from afar, and she answered his greeting; but neither of them changed the direction of his steps. They saw each other often enough, in any case; and it was an accepted fact between them that Reed's calls were better taken singly, as a rule, than in pairs. However, as she went into Reed's room, that day, Olive began to have her doubts how long the old rule would hold good. Reed was increasingly busy, nowadays. Letters and drawings, photographs and samples of ores were piling in upon him from all parts of the country. The old phrase, indeed, was gaining a new fulfilment: the mountain was coming to Mahomet in all literalness. Olive had long since become accustomed to finding the room littered with the débris of much consulting, had grown accustomed to having her trivial gossip interrupted by the advent of fresh letters and a new supply of specimen ores. She had grown glib in reading off the unfamiliar phrasing of the letters, facile in writing down the totally unspellable words of Opdyke's dictated replies. In all of this, however, she had been made to feel aware that she herself stood first to Reed, his work stood second. Not that Olive for one instant would have allowed herself consciously to become jealous of Reed's work. She was too sane and generous for that, too happy in the change it was making in Reed's existence. He was alert and enthusiastic now, where aforetime he was passive and plucky. His brown eyes snapped, not gleamed expressively. In short, the new assistant was finding out, to his extreme surprise, that his position was no sentimental sinecure, that, coming to be hands and feet to supplement an active scientific brain, he was likely to work more strenuously, more to the purpose, than he had done in the New York office of the brilliant specialist who had sent him up to Reed. It was several weeks now since Dolph had made his crisp suggestion that Reed take his profession into bed with him. Even in that little time, the change was measureless; to all practical intents and purposes, the dying had come into a new life. The life, too, was by no means wholly intellectual. As Reed's professional enthusiasm grew stronger, his bodily gain apparently kept pace with it. To be sure, the lower half of him was totally, irrevocably dead. Nevertheless, by sheer, energetic will, Opdyke was making the upper half of his body do duty for the whole, was gaining a control over his crippled lower limbs that, six months before, he would have pronounced impossible. With Ramsdell to pull and pry him to position, nowadays, he sat leaning up against the pillows on his bed, for an hour or two of every morning. The effort brought the beads of sweat out upon his forehead; but he took that a good deal as a matter of course, talked bravely of a rolling chair and a lift built on the corner of the house and even, a little later on, of a motor car and of a down-town office. Best of all, the old haunted look had left his eyes for ever. At least, so Olive had believed, until that day. To-day, despite his smile of greeting, the old expression was peering out at her, and she felt her hopes chilling within her at the sight. "What is it, Reed?" she asked him, after a few minutes of trivial conversation. "Something has gone wrong." "Not with me," he told her quickly. "In fact, things are very right. Ask Ramsdell." "But you look--" "How?" His laugh awaited her final word. "Worried," she told him flatly. "The way you used to look, last winter." "No reason that I should," he reassured her. "Things are going swimmingly. Now that my new assistant has rallied from the shock of his surroundings and come to a realizing sense that I prefer technical journals to tracts, he is proving a grand success. He is going to be of immense help; and I needed him, now that work is piling in. I'm hoping, though, your father can plan some way of giving me a little better use of my arms. There's a loose screw in there that he ought to tighten." "Reed," Olive spoke thoughtfully; "you are rather unusual." With some effort, he kept all edge of bitterness out of his voice, as he replied,-- "I certainly trust so, Olive. It wouldn't be an advantage to humanity at large to have this a normal state of things. Still, it might be worse, lots worse. I'm not nearly so soggy as I was. Which reminds me: do you mind going to the bottom of that heap of letters and taking out the square gray one. Yes. That's it. Now read it. I've saved it up for your delight." There came a silence, broken only by the noise of unfolded paper. Then Olive looked up. "Reed! The--" "Don't swear, Olive," he admonished her, and now his eyes were wholly mirthful. "I wasn't going to. I was only hunting for a suitable epithet. How does she dare?" "Dare take unto herself the glory of what she calls my incipient cure? I wish I thought it was that; but vertebrae are vertebrae, in spite of all the Christian Scientists in all creation. As for her claim, though, she's got us there, Olive. One can't well prove an alibi, when it's a case of absent treatment. Still, I must say I like her nerve." "When did this thing come?" And Olive cast the letter from her, with a sudden fury which, for the instant, downed her sense of humour utterly. "Only to-day. I had meant to try a chair, to-morrow; but, in view of her predictions, I'll be hanged if I will. She would go to cackling forth that it was all her doing. How do you suppose she knew anything about me, anyway?" "Spies, probably. Those people will stoop to anything to carry on their cause," Olive said tartly. "Then one ought to feel a sneaking admiration for their esprit du corps, at least. In fact, if you translate the phrase literally enough, it holds the very nubbin of their whole belief. But I hope you noted the clause concerning Brenton. I am glad she even feels so much of interest in him." Olive settled back in her chair, and yielded up her creed of married life briefly, trenchantly. "Reed, if I owned a husband, I'd focus my mind upon his breakfasts and his buttonholes and his entertainment of an evening. That's what men want, not hifalutin' mind cures delivered at long range." Then she repented. "Still, I'm not fair to Mrs. Brenton, Reed. She doesn't interest me in the least." "Does Brenton?" Reed asked. And then he shut his teeth, as he waited for the reply. The reply, when it came, was direct. "Yes, Reed; he does, intensely. He is a mass of brilliant possibilities that all are going wrong. Moreover, I can't help a feeling I could help him, if I would. I know that sometimes I have seen farther inside his mind than even he knows, and it has given me an odd feeling of responsibility over him, a responsibility that I can't see just how to carry out." Suddenly she paused. "Reed," she said; "you're not as well, to-day. What is the trouble? Are you overdoing; or has Ramsdell let you strain yourself?" He forced a smile back to his lips, although his eyes were haggard. "It's nothing, Olive, really." He spoke as lightly as he could. "Your imaginings concerning Brenton have lapped over on to me; that's all." She felt the rebuke in his words, knew within herself how undeserved it was, and, rather than confess the truth, arose in her own defence. "Not imaginings, Reed," she said, and her self-protective dignity yet hurt him. "Now and then we women do have intuitions that are trustworthy. This, I think, is one of them. And Mr. Brenton needs all the help he can get, out of any sort of source." Reed shut his teeth upon his hurt, until he could command his voice once more. Then,-- "I agree with you there, Olive," he assented. "Moreover, I wrote to Whittenden about him, a week ago. If any one can be of use, it will be Whittenden; he always knows what tonic it is best to prescribe. Must you go?" He looked up at her appealingly. Then the same appeal came into his voice, set it to throbbing with an accent wholly new to Olive's ears. "Olive," he said; "you're not going to misunderstand me, not going to allow Brenton to come in between us?" Suddenly the girl went white; suddenly she bent down to rest her hand on his, in one of the few, few touches she had ever given his fingers since the day he had been brought home and laid there in his room, powerless to withdraw himself from too insistent human contacts. Her voice, when she spoke, had a throb that matched his own. "Never, Reed!" she said. A moment later, she was gone, leaving Opdyke there alone, to wonder and, wondering, to worry. Two afternoons later, Duncan, the new assistant, brought up a message from the laboratory. Brenton would be at leisure, soon after four. Might he come up? That was just after luncheon. Therefore two hours would intervene, two hours for a quiet going over of certain things that Reed Opdyke felt it was for him alone to say, certain measures for Olive's safety which he alone should take. Indeed, there was no other man who stood, to Olive's mind, so nearly in a brother's place; no other man, it seemed to Opdyke, who owned one half so good a right to test the ground on which she stood, to assure himself that she might venture forward safely. Opdyke was no sentimentalist. Nevertheless, he recognized all that it might portend when such a girl as Olive Keltridge, the soul of sanity and downrightness, talked about her comprehension of a man like Brenton. Moreover, Opdyke was no gossip. Nevertheless, he had not failed to hear a certain amount of speculation as to the possibilities of Brenton's seeking a divorce. Sought, there was no question of his getting it. Katharine's desertion was an established fact past all gainsaying. And, if he sought it and won it, what then? Merely the helping him become as well worth while, as well worth Olive's while, as it was possible for any man to be. This was the task which Reed had set himself; the task for which he was bracing himself, during those two endless hours; the task for the accomplishment of which he was resolved, if need be, to tear away the coverings which, up to now, he had held fast above certain of the reticences of his own life. The tearing would be sure to hurt; but what of that? Olive, given the opportunity, would have done as much for him. The afternoon lengthened interminably, and the clock was striking the half-hour, when Brenton finally came up the stairs. His face was grave, as he greeted his old friend, his eyes a little overcast and heavy. Reed jerked his head in the direction of a chair. "Sit down," he said hospitably; "and then fill up your pipe. Duncan doesn't smoke, worse luck; and I find I miss the old aroma. It's rather like incense offered to the ghost of my old self." His accent was trivial, and Brenton, listening to the apparently careless words, could form no notion of the pains that had gone into their choosing. "Your new self, I should say. It's astounding, Opdyke, the way you've picked yourself out of the rut and gone rushing ahead again." "With a difference, though," Reed told him bluntly. "Is the jar full? You like the kind?" "Yes, thanks." And Brenton filled his pipe. After a minute's puffing, "After all, Opdyke, you have pretty well minimized the difference," he observed. "Thanks to Ramsdell and Duncan, yes. They have been wonderful props, and it's good to get on my professional legs again, whatever my bodily ones may do for me. Meanwhile, how are things going with you?" Brenton smoked in silence for a minute. Then,-- "The wraith of my departed priestly calling forbids me to phrase my answer just as I'd like best to do," he said. Reed nodded. "So bad as that? What is the matter now?" "It's hard to specify. I seem to have run myself aground." "Pull off, then," Reed advised. "No craft in sight to tow me." Reed shut his teeth. "Brenton, that has been your trouble from the start. You've always been drifting, anchor up, ready for a tow. Now hoist your sails and, for the Lord's sake, go ahead." "Where?" "Where! Wherever the chart takes you. What chart? The chart of plain duty, man, the duty of an honest citizen to make the most of himself and be a little good to humanity at large. No; wait. You've had your chances; you can't cry off on that. You had your chance, 'way back in college, and you chucked it over. How much more would it have hurt your mother to have seen you once for all take up a secular profession, than it would to have watched you setting out to preach all the things her own religion didn't stand for? You had another chance in Saint Peter's. It wasn't a small chance, either. You could have held that church together, solid; you could have brought its people to a working assent to a practical exposition of their creed that would have kept them busy and loyal to their Creator, in doing their duty to their co-created fellow men. Instead, you ignored your chance to keep them busy on things that would help on the world we live in, and spent all your energies in tangling up your notions of the world we came out of, and the world we, some day, are going into. As mental gymnastics, it was very pretty to watch; as a useful employment for a man who calls himself a pastor of souls, it wasn't worth a rush." "But a man can't help his thoughts," Brenton expostulated suddenly. "Can't he?" Reed whitened. "Brenton," he asked gravely; "don't you suppose that there have been times on times, since they lugged me up these stairs, that, if I had let myself go, I wouldn't have turned my face to the wall and cursed, not only the whole plan of creation, but the Creator himself? Times on times that, if I hadn't held tight to a few rudimentary notions that I took in with my mother's milk, notions about the decent and square thing to do for the God that made you, I wouldn't have tested the logic of your doubtings with a dose of cyanide? I tell you a man can help his thoughts. I tell you a man can hold to his beliefs. He can wonder about the petty things as much as he chooses, and it never does him one bit of harm. But the final great belief of all, that there is a wise Creator back of things, and that we owe Him at least as much loyal courtesy as we give to the best of our brother men: that is something it is in the hands of any man to hold on to, if he chooses. Brenton, I hate to lecture you," and, with a sudden gesture brimful of appealing for forgiveness, for loyal comprehension, Reed stretched out his hand; "but you have got to bring yourself up with a round turn. In some way or other, you have missed your chances. You have gone rushing off for shiny butterflies, when you ought to have stopped at home and milked the cows. Something," he smiled; "Whittenden says it was my downfall, set you to asking questions that you were too nearsighted to answer. Instead of sticking to a few fundamental bits of faith, you made yourself a ladder out of theological catchwords, clambered up it and kicked out all the rungs, one after another, as you climbed. Then you turned dizzy, and lost your grip, and fell all in a heap. Brenton, we've had about the same experience, one way or another, out of life." "But you have braced up again and gone ahead," Brenton said slowly. "So will you, man. That's why I am harrying you now, to start you up again. We neither one of us are half through our allotted term of years. In simple decency, we've got to play out the game." "If we can," Brenton interrupted. "No if about it. We've got it to do. Of course, we can't do it in quite the same old way. Be plucky as we can, it's impossible for us to deny that we've been scarred--badly; that the scars, some of them, can never really heal. Still, as long as we've a year ahead of us and a drop of fighting blood inside us--Brenton, it isn't easy; but it's our one way to prove we're game." Then, for a while, the room was very still. At last, Reed spoke once more. "Scott," he said slowly, and the old name held a note of great love; "once on a time, you didn't resent it when I told you that old Mansfield asked me to take you in hand and show you a few things out of my own experience. Don't resent it now. We've been too good friends for too many years for that." Ramsdell's steady step came up the stairs, and Reed went on quite simply. "Then you've heard from Whittenden?" Brenton, pulling himself back to the present, looked up sharply at the question. "How did you know?" "He wrote me. What does he suggest?" "Didn't he tell you that? He wants me to go down to him, and take over some of his settlement work." "Shall you go?" Brenton shook his head. "It's out of the question, Opdyke. I only wish I could, for I am not of much use to your father, I'm afraid. Still, hereafter--Well, perhaps you've put new force into me by your admonitions." But his voice broke a little over the intentionally careless words. Opdyke ignored the allusion. "Then why not go to Whittenden?" he inquired, as carelessly as he was able. Brenton arose and stood, erect, looking down at his old friend intently, as if anxious that Opdyke should lose no fragment of his meaning. "Because, now more than ever," he said, a little bit insistently; "I feel it would be impossible for me to go away from the college. To change now would be a confession of another failure. If I am to make good at all, it must be here and soon. Besides," and now his accent changed; "I must stay on here and keep my house open, Opdyke. The time may come, when Mrs. Brenton wishes to come back to me. If it does come, she must find everything ready, waiting for her to make her realize that, at last, she is once more at home." And then, as Ramsdell came inside the room, he turned and went away down the stairs. Watching him, Reed Opdyke could not but feel reassured on his account. Whatever his anxieties for himself and Olive, he could not fail to realize that, unknown to any of them, looking on, the steadying processes in Brenton had begun. _

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