"See more," he ordered; "any amount more. You have time enough, you
lazy young sinner, and I'll be answerable for all the consequences."
Opdyke yielded to his curiosity.
"What kind of consequences?"
"The inevitable kind that follow all you youngsters. Listen, boy.
Brenton is a mixture of genius, and prig, and ignorant young hermit;
or, rather, he has the elements all inside him, ready to be mixed.
You'll have to do the mixing."
"I?" Opdyke looked startled. "Professor, what a beast of a bore!"
"No matter if it is. I believe in the conservation of all latent
energy. Brenton's is all latent, and I count on you to do the
conserving. I've been asking questions lately. From all accounts, you
are the only man in college but myself who has taken the pains to get
inside the poor beggar's shell."
"Hm. Well?" Opdyke's eyes were on the smoke in front of him; but, to
the older man, it was plain that he was listening intently.
"Now you've got to go to work to get him out of his shell, so that
people can see what he is like and, more than that, so that he can find
out what people really are. He has no more knowledge of humanity than a
six-months puppy; in fact, he hasn't so much. And--he's--got--to--learn."
The words came weightily.
"What's the good?" Opdyke asked lazily.
The reply was unexpected, even to him who knew Professor Mansfield's
downright ways.
"To teach him what an ass he really is. Till he finds that out--till
you all find it out about yourselves, there's not much hope for any of
you."
Opdyke flushed.
"Thanks," he said a little shortly.
Bending across the table, the old professor laid a friendly hand upon
his arm.
"Don't be huffy, Reed. A few of you take in the knowledge with your
mother's milk. That's what saves society, by marking it off into
separate classes, what makes the difference between your father's son,
and the strenuous scion of fifty ministerial Wheelers. But, because
you've already got it, you owe all the more to the poor chaps who
haven't."
"Yes, sir." Opdyke's reply came with dutiful promptness, although it
was plain to the professor that he had flown quite beyond the limits of
the young mind before him. "What do you want me to do with him,
though?"
The professor's eyes twinkled, as he dragged himself back to the
practical aspects of the case.
"Coax him out of his shell. If he won't come, then haul him out by the
ears. Have him in your room and have some other men in there to meet
him. Take him about with you. Take him to Mory's, on a thick night
there. Show him life, the way you know it. If you must, show him an
occasional siren. I can say this to you, Reed, because I have taken
pains to find out that your sirens are pretty decent ones, cleaner than
most of them. To sum it up, let Scott Brenton see life as you are
living it, not as he imagines it from the point of view of the man who
never can do anything but sit back in a corner and look on."
Opdyke filled his pipe anew, puffed at it silently, then spoke.
"Beastly tantalizing thing to do," he said. "What in thunder is the
use?"
The professor spoke with sudden fervour.
"Much!" he said. "At least, it will teach him, when he's preaching for
the Lord, to remember that Mammon isn't always quite so black as he is
painted."
And so, on top of Reed Opdyke's other interests, Professor Mansfield
laid the burden of Scott Brenton's worldly training. In pointing out
the need of it to Opdyke, however, the old professor had been by no
means as downright as he seemed. From above his lecture notes and his
blowpipes, he kept keen eyes upon the members of his classes. Watching
Scott steadily, in those days which followed upon the boy's bitter
disappointment, he had seen new lines graving themselves about his
lips, lines of decision now, not of worried mal-nutrition, lines that
too easily might shape themselves to wilfulness. Scott, recluse that he
had been, had also been as steady as a deacon; but the old professor
realized that a reaction might come at almost any instant. One outlet,
and that the highest one, forbidden him, he might seek other, lower
ones in sheer bravado. Forbidden to climb into the Tree of Knowledge of
all Good, he might, in revenge, fall greedily upon the Apples of Sodom.
Left to himself, no one knew what harpies he might chance upon as
comrades, nor what sights they might show him. To prevent all that, to
provide him with an outlet which should be as wholesome as it was fresh
and sparkling, the professor had given him into the safe hands of Reed
Opdyke. It was as he said: he was quite well aware that, although Reed
had his sirens, they all were curiously clean ones; in short, that his
young Mammon was nobler far than many a senile God.