It was not until a good two weeks later that Olive Keltridge came into
any actual contact with the new rector. At the Dennison dinner, she had
been too busy in dodging the conversational assaults of the rector's
lady to pay any great amount of attention to the rector himself. Since
that time, she had viewed Brenton only with the height of the chancel
steps between them. However, Olive was conscious that the man
interested her, even at that distance; and it was with some degree of
impatience that she confessed her interest to young Dolph Dennison who,
as a rule, was her safety valve.
"I despise a woman who goes mad about the clergy, Dolph, and I despise
the way this new rector-man of ours keeps my eyes glued upon him, all
the time he's preaching. It isn't the quality of his sermons, either;
it is something inherent in the man himself that causes me to watch
him."
Dolph Dennison laughed with the callousness of a wayward boy. He was
years younger than his brother, the professor. Moreover, he had never
taken any especial pains to expedite the processes of his growing up.
"You'll recover, Olive; I have seen you enthused like this, before. As
for Brenton, it's a mere case of burbling genteel platitudes in a
marvellous voice. Even I, though I deplore the platitudes, find my own
gooseflesh rising in response to his larynx. It's a tremendous asset to
a man, that! Some day, when I have the time, I'll work it out into a
series of equations: heart and brain and larynx as the unknown
quantities to be properly equated, so much brain for so much, or so
little, larynx. Thanks, no. I won't come in. I'm late for luncheon now.
You will be at the Evans tea, to-morrow afternoon?"
Nodding cheerily, young Dennison went on his way, leaving Olive to
ponder upon the accuracy of his diagnosis. Was it only larynx, after
all? Or had the new young rector something back of it, something that
singled him out from the ruck of men, and held him up as worthy of
attention? Olive's eyes grew thoughtful, for an instant, at the
question. Then the laugh came back into them again, the while she
thought of Mrs. Brenton.
It was only the next afternoon that Brenton came by appointment to call
on Doctor Keltridge. There were certain minor matters to be discussed
between the rector and his senior warden, before it appeared really
wise to bring them up in open meeting. To both men, it seemed possible
to discuss them with greater freedom from interruption at the doctor's
house than at the rectory. Therefore had been the appointment between
them.
According to his custom, Brenton kept his appointment to the very
letter, and the clocks were striking three, when the Keltridge maid
deposited him in the Keltridge drawing-room. The doctor showed himself
less punctual, however, and a good quarter of an hour elapsed before
steps were heard in the hall outside. Moreover, before Brenton had time
to question to himself the weight of those same steps, the door was
pushed open to admit, not a keen-faced and grizzly doctor, but a
totally apologetic Olive.
"Mr. Brenton?" she said, with a slight lift, as of question, in her
voice. "Really, I am so penitent at the message I am bringing you. The
maid told me you were here. Then, after a while, she came back again
and told me she couldn't find my father anywhere."
With a courteous little gesture, Brenton interrupted her apology and
half rose from his chair.
"Really, it's not at all a matter for apology, Miss Keltridge. I can
come again, some other day. Your father is a busy man, I know."
But Olive stayed him with scanty ceremony.
"No; wait, Mr. Brenton. I hadn't finished my tale. Besides, when you
have lived in town a little longer, you'll know that nobody ever does
apologize for my father; we all revel in his dear old absurdities. Sit
down, please. He will be here before very long."
Brenton did sit down, the while he suppressed a vague question regarding
the filial nature of the word _absurdities_. Then he yielded to the
merriment in Olive's eyes, and laughed outright and boyishly.
"I've heard something of the sort already, Miss Keltridge," he
confessed. "What was it, this time?"
For an instant, Olive paused, astonished at the change which had come
over her companion. His clerical veneer had fallen from him; the man
beneath was singularly human, likable, and as simple as Dolph Dennison
himself.
"This time? I went to see, went to the laboratory, though the maid had
told me he wasn't in there. She had knocked twice; then she had opened
the door to look in. At first, I agreed with her. Then I heard a little
noise, over in a corner behind the table. There on the floor, the flat
floor, sat my father, sixty-five years old. His hair was all on end,
and his cheek was smudged with something yellow, and he was as happy as
a baby in a sand pile. Doing?" Olive made a helpless little gesture.
"How should I know? I'm no student of germs. He had a row of glass pans
in front of him, with hideous messes in them, and he appeared to be
sounding the depths of iniquity in them with a small glass divining
rod."
Then their eyes met above the finished story, and together the two of
them burst out laughing, like a pair of merry children.
"You think he will become visible, in course of time?" Brenton asked
her.
She shook her head, as she laughed again.
"I trust so, Mr. Brenton; but, of course, nobody ever can predict. He
knows you are here. At least," swiftly she amended her phrase; "he did
know it. How long the fact stays by him is another question. If you
were only a germ, now----" She surveyed him dubiously. "You wouldn't
care to go into the laboratory?" she asked him.
A sudden light flashed up into Scott Brenton's face, the dazzle of a
flame long buried, never entirely to be extinguished.
"If I might! Wouldn't it disturb him, though?"
But Olive had seen the lighting of the quiet face, and her curiosity
was aroused. What was there in the mere mention of a laboratory that
could so transform a humdrum little rector into a thing of fire? That
it was the laboratory, Olive never stopped to question. She was far too
sane, too used to the tame-tabby-cat propensities of youthful rectors,
to imagine for a moment that the enthusiasm had come out of the chance
to escape from her society. Therefore she decided that, for the
present, she would keep this particular rector to herself, on the
off-chance of discovering the real source of his enthusiasm. Her
knowledge of her father's habits assured her, beyond doubt, that later
on, much later, there would still be plenty of time for the laboratory
visit. Accordingly, she answered Brenton's question with flat
discouragement.
"Probably," she told him quite uncompromisingly. "However, it is good
for him to be disturbed, once in a while, even if he doesn't always
take it so very nicely."
With palpable regret, Brenton settled back again in his chair.
"Oh, well, I'd hate to be disturbing him," he said politely.
"Better stay here and wait," Olive advised him. "It can't be long
before he comes, and some of those glass pans were very awful."
"Do you think so? One never really minds a laboratory smell, after the
first whiff of it. It seems to go into the system once for all, at the
start. After," this time, the regret was even more palpable; "one
always rather longs to get back into it."
Olive smiled.
"So I have noticed, with my father." Then her accent changed, grew less
conventional. "You have had it, then, Mr. Brenton?"
"Of another sort. I had three years in a chemical laboratory, when I
was in college," he told her simply.
"Really? And you liked it?"
His voice dropped by a whole octave, thrilled with a new resonance
which, for some reason that she could not analyze then or after, set
the girl's nerves all a-quiver. It was the voice of a man who, for the
first time, is confessing aloud his master passion.
"It made life over for me," he said gravely.
"Then--Forgive me, if I have no right to ask the question. But one
generally keeps on with a thing like that." Olive was painfully aware
that her curiosity, however she wrapped it up in apologies, was most
unjustifiable.
Scott Brenton, however, did not appear to find it so. Too simple-minded
and downright to obtrude his personal history, he also was too
simple-minded to conceal it.
"I should have kept on with it, at any cost," he answered; "only for
the sake of my mother. She was a widow without much money; she was
giving all she had to educate me, and her heart was set on--something
else."
If Olive noted the little pause, she had at least the super-feminine
tact to ignore it.
"Your priesthood?"
He nodded slowly.
"After a fashion,--yes."
This time, the pause seemed to her entirely natural.
"She must be very happy now," she answered. "Saint Peter's is a dear
old church, mellow enough in its traditions to make up for its
hopelessly new architecture; and I am sure you'll love this sleepy
town."
But it was plain to her that Brenton, quite oblivious to her words, was
pursuing his own train of thought. Out of it he spoke.
"My mother died, two years ago, Miss Keltridge."
Her reply came promptly.
"How glad you must be that she lived to know that her wishes had been
carried out!"
This time, the pause was a good deal longer. Without Olive's in the
least suspecting it, the invincible honour of the man before her was
struggling with his reticence. Should he absorb a praise to which he
had no right; or should he thrust his confidence upon her at this early
stage of their acquaintance? Honour won out.
"Only in part," he said a little sadly. "Really, Miss Keltridge,
there's no especial reason I should bore you with all this, except that
I don't like to be caught, sailing under false colours. I wanted to be
a chemist of some sort or other, something experimental and
theoretical, if I could; and they told me that I could. Sometimes I
wish they hadn't. It would have simplified things a good deal, if I
never had found it out. And my mother, all the time, had been denying
herself in order to prepare me to preach the bluest sort of Calvinism.
I found that it was going to break her heart, if I gave up the plan, so
I gave up the chemistry, instead, and took the preaching.
Unfortunately, though, in the meantime, the chemistry--and some other
things--had made me also give up the Calvinism. And so, in the end of
all things, even my preaching seemed to her a wretched compromise."
His eyes were fixed upon the carpet, and he could not see her face; but
the gentleness in her young voice set his pulses pounding. In all his
life up to this hour, such gentleness never had been meant for him. His
mother was too stern; Catia too metallic. As for other women, he had
never been in sufficiently short range of them, psychologically
speaking, to be aware whether they meant to be gentle to him or not.
"I think," Olive was saying; "that she understands it better now.
Anyway, you always will be glad of the choice you made."
His eyes still on the carpet at his feet, Scott Brenton spoke moodily.
"I wish I knew," he said.
And then he was aghast at the consciousness that, before this
comparative stranger, and a girl at that, he had taken down the
barriers before the secret of his disappointment.
Happily, however, Olive was serenely unconscious of either barriers or
secret. Instead, she was intent on preventing any retro-active regrets
upon the part of a devoted son.
"All creeds are a good deal alike, just as they say all roads lead to
Rome," she reminded him, with a curious crossing of Mrs. Brenton's
mental trail. "The preaching, after all, is the main thing, that and
the priestly life; it doesn't make much difference whether you wear a
stole, or a gown and bands. And as for the chemistry," she laughed
lightly; "if you ever feel your work in that was wasted, just go and
talk to the head professor here. Only just the other day, I heard him
laying down the law to father, claiming that his laboratory was the
only open door to logic, the only training school where one can find
out whether his elements can be combined safely, or whether they will
explode and, what's a good deal more to the point, explode him with
them."
The laugh came back to Brenton's face. Once more Olive wondered at its
charm.
"There's something in his theory," he admitted.
"Everything, according to his notion. The last I heard, the dear man
apparently was trying to get himself annexed to the literary courses.
He declared in open faculty meeting, the other day, that a proper
training in chemistry would kill off a good fifty per cent of the
modern novels. The authors would realize the explosiveness of their
plots before they touched them, and wouldn't waste months on months of
work, brewing what, in the end of it all, was nothing more than a mere
flash in the pan. He was still elaborating his theory, when the
President called him to order, ready for the motion to adjourn." Then
she harked back to her former theme. "You must see the laboratory here,
Mr. Brenton, if you care for such things. Girls? Oh, yes, of course;
but you'll soon get past regarding that as any handicap. In fact,
according to Professor Opdyke, it is one of the best equipped
laboratories in the country."
But Brenton's attention had wandered from the fact, caught by one of
the minor details which surrounded it.
"Professor Opdyke?" he echoed a little blankly.
"Yes. You have met him?"
"Not here. Not at all, in fact. The name is so uncommon that I am quite
sure. And yet--"
It was plain to Olive that Brenton was struggling with some
half-forgotten memory, striving to bring it forth to light, to link it
with the present; or, failing that, at least with something tangible in
his past life. And yet, the blurring of his memory was not too
inexplicable. Reed Opdyke still remembered Brenton clearly, still
regretted the apparent waste of some of his more brilliant
possibilities. Scott Brenton, on the other hand, had totally dismissed
Reed Opdyke from his mind. In the contact between the two of them, the
one had stepped up, the other down; and, as so often happens, the
truer, the more lasting picture is the one gained from the upper level.
Moreover, Brenton's later life, and most especially the summer which
had followed the ending of his association with Reed Opdyke, had been
so very strenuous as to obliterate by far the greater number of his
earlier contacts.
Then suddenly memory stirred in its sleep, stretched itself, awakened.
"Did Professor Opdyke have a son?" he asked, with a new eagerness which
was wholly alien to the one concerning his bit of autobiography.
Olive smiled at his phrasing.
"He did; I trust he still does," she answered; "though, with a mining
man, one never can be quite sure. Why? Did you know Reed?"
The colour came into Brenton's cheeks, as he blurted out the totally
forgotten truth.
"I adored him, all my last two years at college."
"Really? Yes, he is Professor Opdyke's son; and people who have seen
him lately tell me he is more adorable than ever."
"When have you seen him?" For something in Olive's accent made Brenton
realize that there was no necessity for any preliminary question
concerning the fact that she knew Opdyke well.
"Not since the year of his graduation. In fact, I was at his commencement.
Why," and suddenly her eyes gathered into focus; "I remember you then,
Mr. Brenton. Reed showed you to me as----" Then, all at once, she
faltered and her colour came.
He strove to help her out of the abyss into which she so unwittingly
had fallen.
"One of the waiters at his eating club, and popularly known there as
'Reed's Parson'?" he asked her, with a little smile which sought to
cover the sting that came to him with the memory.
But Olive shook her head.
"No; not that at all. It was one of the Might-Have-Beens, he called
you," she said, with brave downrightness. But, afterwards, when she
thought the matter over, she wondered whether she had bettered it, or
made it worse. In any case, she went on a little hastily. "Since then,
as it happens, I never once have been here, when Reed has been at home.
Of course, he has been back here now and then; but once I was in
London, and in New York, the other times."
"Where is he?"
She shook her head again.
"That is the hardest sort of question to answer, for he is always on
the wing. He went in for mining engineering, and is making quite a
record as consulting engineer. It's copper, I think, he consults about;
anyway, no one ever can predict where he will be heard from next.
Really, if you knew him, you must meet Professor Opdyke. The dear old
man is bursting with pride in his only son; he talks about him by the
hour at a time, if we let him. The trouble is that we all are so cloyed
with hearing about Reed's virtues and Reed's triumphs that we have a
tendency to run away before the paternal downpour commences. A new pair
of ears will be a veritable godsend to his father. He and my father are
the greatest sort of chums, and--" Suddenly Olive paused and began to
look distinctly uneasy. "By the way, Mr. Brenton, where is my father? I
really think that, in mercy to your patience, I'd better go and jog his
memory once more."
And jog his memory she did, and with such success that, this time,
Doctor Keltridge put in a tardy and apologetic appearance. However,
when, smiling guiltily at his own sins of omission, he came to greet
his guest, he came alone. Olive, her hospitable duty done, had
vanished, to return no more.