"I don't doubt it, Catia," he responded quietly. "However, as it
happens, I had some other things to think about."
That brought her to a momentary halt. However, she swiftly rallied.
"Some people can think of more than one thing at a time," she
announced, with something of the same accent in which, long years
before, she had ejaculated "Dirty-Face!"
But Brenton's mind was hungrily intent upon his paper. Not even two
years of Catia's corrective moods had taught him to grasp the fact that
she would never cease from her corrections until he had given evidence
of writhing underneath their sting. It was not enough for her to have
the last word; she must be left in a position to gloat upon its visible
effect. Else, wherein lay the pleasure of having given it utterance?
Brenton, with manlike unconsciousness of this great fact of feminine
psychology, once more buried himself in his morning paper. Promptly and
ruthlessly Catia exhumed him.
"Scott," she said, with a petulance which she permitted herself but
rarely, not so much for moral reasons as because the _Ladies' Galaxy_
had pronounced it bad for the complexion; "do put down that stupid paper
and attend to me."
"Yes, dear." And Brenton blinked a little, in the sudden change of
focus demanded of his eyes.
Catia only saw the blinking, and to herself she pronounced it a new and
ugly mannerism. She did not take the trouble to notice the eyes
themselves, to read the earnest desire to please her, written so
plainly in their luminous gray depths.
"Oh, do wake up!" she adjured him, with increasing impatience. "Scott,
do you know you never really come to life till after breakfast? Can't
you see I want to talk to you? Now do listen and answer me. What do you
mean to do about this Saint Peter's matter?"
"To do about it!" It was no especial wonder that the echo irritated
Catia; and yet neither was it any especial wonder that Scott, in his
astonishment, was betrayed into an echo of that sort. As yet, her
meaning was opaque to him.
"Yes, do about it," Catia echoed, in her turn. "They say there's sure
to be a vacancy, and that it's a splendid place."
"Who say?" Brenton queried cautiously.
"All the convocation. Don't be a dunce and pretend, Scott. Anyway, I'm
not a mole; I can see which way the weather vanes are pointing. They
were all talking about it, while the convocation was going on. Ever so
many of the wives spoke to me about it, and told me that you were the
man who ought to have it."
Quite tranquilly Brenton helped himself to more butter.
"Then, knowing the Bishop's common sense, it seems highly probable to
me that I shall be the man to get it," he responded.
"You won't, unless you try for it," Catia assured him.
He shook his head. The idea of ecclesiastical wirepulling was repugnant
to his nature.
"One doesn't try for things of that kind, Catia," he answered.
"Then one doesn't get them," she retorted curtly.
It was Brenton who broke the next period of silence.
"Besides," he said, as if his sentences had followed each other without
break; "I am not at all sure that my work here is done, by any means."
"Scott!" Catia put on the cover of the sugar bowl with a defiant clash.
"Surely, you don't mean to stay buried in this little hole much
longer?"
Once more his smile showed whimsical.
"Really, Catia, I hadn't thought about it as a hole," he said. "About
my staying here or anywhere, I suppose it all depends upon the Bishop."
She pushed her chair back a little from the table, and then clasped her
hands upon the table's edge. Her attitude betokened her intention of
staying there until the matter had been fought out to a finish.
"Not one half so much upon the Bishop as it does upon yourself," she
told him firmly. "The Bishop decides things in the end; but he never
originates them. Unless you stir yourself a little and show him that
you're restless, you'll be welcome to sit for all time to come in one
corner of the diocese. In fact, you have been sitting in a corner for
two years. It is high time you showed him you were getting cramps in
your knees, and needed a higher seat to straighten them out. There is
no especial sense in your wasting your time among these people. Any
broken-down old hack ought to be all they've any right to look for."
"But not all they need," Brenton interpolated swiftly.
She waved aside the interpolation.
"It's what you need, Scott, I'm talking about," she told him. "You are
young, and you need a chance. What's more, the Bishop isn't going to
offer it to you, until you give him to understand that you expect it.
There are too many hungry mouths open for every bit of advantage to
make it worth his while to hunt for any more. As for Saint Peter's,
they all say it is an ideal parish: a rich church in a college town,
with a large salary and not too much work. In fact," Catia added
wisely; "they all say that there never does need to be too much work in
a parish where a good share of the congregation are very young, and
transients."
Brenton lifted his head. Then he lifted his brows, fine, narrow brows
and arching.
"It strikes me that there might be all the more," he said.
Catia's fingers beat a tattoo on the table.
"You're just for all the world like your mother, Scott," she said, with
renewed impatience.
"I hope so," Brenton assented gravely, for Mrs. Brenton had died, a
year before, and her memory still was sacred in the mind of her son.
Not even Catia, in her present mood, dared introduce a jarring note,
until a little interval had followed upon Scott's grave reply. She,
too, had cared for Mrs. Brenton; at least, she had cared as much as it
was in her to care for any one. She, too, had mourned sincerely, when
the patient, unselfish, plodding life went out. Indeed, there had
seemed to be no little cruelty in the fate which had ordained that Mrs.
Brenton, after giving her life and strength and all her prayers to the
equipment of her son in his profession, should not have been allowed a
little longer time to take pleasure in the things her tireless effort
had accomplished. For, though Scott had done his best to help himself,
the real strain had rested on his mother, the more real in that it had
been unbroken by the variety of his student existence, unrewarded by
the elating consciousness of personal achievement which had come to him
at the end of every stage of his development.
In all truth, it had been upon Mrs. Brenton that the burden had fallen
most heavily. She had accomplished the almost impossible achievement;
yet to her had been denied the fullest fruition of her dreams. Scott
was a clergyman at last, a preacher, it was said, of more than ordinary
promise; but the gospel that he was going forth to preach to all men
was not a gospel accredited by any of the ancestral Parson Wheelers.
Therefore it was that, after all her struggle, poor Mrs. Brenton died,
a disappointed woman. Therefore it was that, by the very reason of the
sincerity of his own decisions, Scott, her son, realized her
disappointment, and cherished her memory the more tenderly on that
account. Vaguely, but resolutely, he had clung to the hope that the day
would dawn when his mother would come into his own way of thinking. He
only resigned that hope, while he listened to the prayer of the village
parson beside his mother's open grave. It was an extemporaneous prayer;
but it lacked no detail on that account. And there are few things in
life more tragic than permanent misunderstandings between a child and
parent. That this one must now be permanent not even Scott Brenton's
theological tenets could leave him room for doubt.
Catia's cause for mourning was by far more practical. She realized that
it was Mrs. Brenton who had provided her with a professional husband,
in place of the petty farmers and shopkeepers who, otherwise, had
bounded her horizon. Moreover, she missed Mrs. Brenton sorely, when
there came a need to discuss Scott's faults and failings, to plan how
best to put an end to them before they stood in the way of his career.
Also of her career. For, despite her manifest disdain of the village
parish where, as it seemed to her, Scott was merely marking time, Catia
had her own keen notions as to the part, granted a suitable environment
to serve as stage, a rector's wife could play. Saint Peter's, taken as
a stage, would admirably suit her purposes. A college town, and a
girls' college town at that, could not fail to surround the rector's
lady, not only with a proper train of satellites, but with an audience
worthy of her utmost powers.
Already, at the recent convocation, she had probed the subject
cleverly. That is, in the most incidental fashion, she had led the talk
around to the new Bishop of Western Oklahoma, had casually mentioned
the parish whence he had clambered to the bishop's throne, and then, in
greedily receptive silence, she had listened to the scraps of
conversation evoked by her apparently careless words. At first, her
investigations had been carried on among the other diocesan wives.
Finding them, to all seeming, gullible and loquacious, she had even
ventured on the Bishop. And the good old Bishop, near-sighted and
slightly hard of hearing, had carried away the genial impression that
Brenton's wife was a very pretty woman and would be of inestimable help
to him in managing a parish. Indeed, the Bishop, who was celibate,
thought much about the helpful influence of a proper wife, the evening
after his short talk with Catia. He even wondered whether he had been
quite wise in allowing the two of them--for, ever afterward, he
persisted in thinking of them jointly--to be buried in a country parish
where it was possible an experienced widower might manage the work
alone.
Of this, however, and of the good Bishop's later meditations and of his
consequent questionings and investigations, Catia unhappily was in
ignorance. Her ignorance, moreover, led her now into employing on her
husband the final weapon in her woman's quiver, namely pathos.
She dropped her eyes to her fingernails, and spoke with reverential
deliberation.
"She was a good woman, Scott, a dear, good woman, even if she always
was a little narrow. It can't fail to be a pleasure to you now to think
back to the way we have done our best to carry out her wishes as--"
suddenly Catia bethought herself of the change in the label of their
theology--"as far as our own consciences would allow us. And now, dear
boy," her eyes drooped lower still over her request; "now that you
haven't her to consider any longer, aren't you willing to do just one
very, very little thing for me?"
"I hope so, Catia," Brenton responded, still quite gravely. "What is it
that you want?"
Despite her efforts to the contrary, her voice thrilled with the sudden
surety that she had gained her cause.
"Write to the Bishop, dear, and tell him you will take Saint Peter's,
when he offers it," she begged him.
Brenton lifted his head to stare at her, aghast.
"Catia, I can't," he told her sternly.
Nevertheless, in the end of things, he did. His later self-reckonings
were all the more severe on that account. In more senses than one,
Scott Brenton's rest-time ended with his turning his back upon the
country parish.