"Where away?"
With the question, Dolph Dennison flung himself into step at Olive
Keltridge's side, one morning in late January. Two inches of snow
crackling under foot and a coating of hoarfrost on all the elm trees
was answering as a fair substitute for winter; and the blood of both
young people was tingling with even that unwonted sting. Nevertheless,
though walking briskly, Olive had been lost in a brown study, and she
started, as Dolph's genial hail fell on her ears. Then she nodded
gayly.
"Ditto. Why aren't you in class?" she demanded.
"It's low-minded to be eternally talking shop," he told her. "Why can't
you for once let me delude myself into the belief that I'm like a lily
of the field, without a spinning wheel in sight?"
"A lily in a fur-lined coat!" Olive's accent was disdainful. "You ought
to be ashamed to be rolled up like this, this splendid morning."
Dolph eyed her seal jacket accusingly.
"I am," he confessed. "I'm immensely proud of my fur lining, and I hate
like thunder to go out, buttoned up. One might as well be lined with
quilted farmer satin, with an imitation-mink shawl collar, for all the
glory he gets out of winter. That's where you women score; you wear
your wool outside."
"Yes; but we don't turn up our collars, a day like this," Olive mocked
him. "Really, Dolph, you're growing soft. But you haven't answered my
question. Why aren't you at a class?"
"You're so beastly insistent, Olive. What's the use? If you must know,
I've given the dear children a cut, this morning. One of them came
prowling into class, all broken out with mumps; that is, if you can
call it broken out, when there is only one of it and as large as a
camel's hump. Anyhow, I freely offered them a cut, and advised them
all to go to their homes and to disinfect themselves with due
discretion."
"And you?" Olive inquired.
"Me? I'm immune. I haven't cheek enough to begin to swell up like that.
Accordingly, I am merely taking a walk, while I cultivate my muse."
"And I'm to be the muse's understudy?" Olive laughed. "Thank you, I'm
otherwise engaged."
"You looked it, when I met you. What's doing?"
"Household economics. I'm going the rounds of the basement bargain
counters, hunting dish towelling."
"What's the use?"
"To dry the dishes," Olive told him literally. "One doesn't want to eat
things in a puddle."
Dolph stuck his hands into the pockets of his coat. Then he turned to
face her rebukefully.
"What a concrete mind you do have, Olive! I wish you'd come into my
classes; I'd teach you how to generalize, and give you some much-needed
lessons in beauty of diction. You mean well; but you certainly do talk
like a housemaid, and--Good morning, Mr. Brenton. Jolly sort of
morning, too!" Then Dolph digressed. "What in thunder is the matter
with that fellow, Olive?"
"Matter?" Olive tried her best to look surprised at the question.
"No use shamming. You are perfectly aware that something has gone wrong
with the dominie, and he's on his nerves," Dolph told her coolly.
"Besides, why should you be denying it? One only tells fibs about one's
own responsibilities, and you aren't responsible for Brenton, as far as
I know."
"Heaven forbid!" Olive replied, with hasty piety. "I have all the
responsibility I can endure, with you and Reed."
"Best cut out Opdyke, then, and focus it all on me," Dolph advised her
genially. "I need it, and I shall repay your effort, seven-fold." Then
he digressed again, this time without a trace of humour. "Olive, for a
fact, how is Opdyke?" he inquired.
"Haven't you seen him lately?"
"Yes, of course." Dolph spoke with some impatience. "That's the reason
I am asking. I go in there, as often as I can spend the time and stand
the strain."
Olive edged a trifle nearer to the fur-lined elbow.
"You feel it, too, Dolph?"
"Good Lord, yes! How could anybody help it, anybody with a nerve in his
composition? It takes it out of one tremendously, Olive," Dolph frowned
intently; "and it's a curious fact that it takes it out of me worse on
his good days than on his bad ones."
Olive glanced up sharply.
"I didn't know he had any bad ones; at least, not to show them out."
Dolph shook his head at the street in general.
"That's the woman of you, Olive; the woman in you, I mean. Opdyke is
morally bound to hold it all in, when you're in sight and hearing. No
man that's half a man will squeak before a woman, and Opdyke's all man,
fast enough. Yes, poor devil, he does have his bad days, like all the
rest of us. However, the rest of us can arise and lick somebody, if the
spirit moves us; and poor old Opdyke has to lie still and take it out
in swearing. He does swear, too; and now and then his temper is
positively vitriolic."
"Reed's?" Olive's voice betrayed indignation, incredulity.
"Rather." Dolph laughed. "On one or two occasions, it has risen to that
level." Then he sobered. "Don't begrudge him the relief of it, Olive.
It's his one salvation, his one road of escape from something that
easily might be madness. Have you thought about the change it's made
for him?"
"Dolph! Do any of us ever think of anything else?"
For an instant, he eyed her keenly, apparently seeking to discover what
underlay her words. Then,--
"Not when we are with him, I fancy," he assented. "And, of course, I
never knew him much till now, so even I can't take it all in, the way
you do. Still, I can imagine it a little, imagine what it must be, to
an out-door man like him, to be shut up in that one room, packed in
with all the frilly duds Mrs. Opdyke has stuffed in around him. Really,
I'd feel exactly like a mutton chop in a tissue-paper flounce, myself.
The frills add to the ignominy. Why can't she let him have the good of
all the bare, empty space he can get, even if it isn't much?"
Olive interrupted.
"Dolph, you're not the dunce you might be. That's a good idea."
He nodded.
"It's common sense. Fancy, Olive, if you were laid low, which heaven
forfend, and had to live mainly on the fruits of your imagination,
wouldn't you grow more of those fruits on a bit of blank, sunny wall
than on a perfect trellis work of messy little pictures and ruffled
lace and calico hangings? It's worth your while to think it over, and
then to summon Mrs. Opdyke to think it over with you. We men want
space, not gimcracks. But, about his temper, do be discreet and forget
that I told tales. I supposed of course you knew it, knew it was bound
to come out now and then. He's got to have some sort of escape valve;
now all the more, since your father has shut down upon his smoking.
Really, Olive, that was beastly mean of him, I must say." Dolph turned
on her accusingly.
"I didn't know he had. Reed always has smoked, I know."
"It was only day before yesterday. I suppose you'd set him down a baby,
if I hinted that the water came into his eyes, while he was telling me.
Olive," Dolph flung out the question with a certain desperation; "for
God's sake, how long has this thing got to go on?"
"Dolph, I don't know."
"Doesn't your father ever say things?"
"Not of that sort. He never does. Besides, seeing Reed, as I do, almost
every day, it's better that I shouldn't know."
"But you must think," he urged. "Really, Olive, the thing is going on
all our nerves; anyhow, on mine. I can't see that great, strong fellow
lie there, all these eight months, and keep steady as he does, and come
to know him as I'm doing, know he has been, and is, more of a man than
most of us are ever likely to be: I can't watch him, I tell you, and
keep my grip on my sense of humour. I like Opdyke better than I like
most men; I'd miss him more than most. Still, Olive," and the face
above the fur-lined coat was suddenly grown grim; "watching him as I
do, I can't help feeling that it would have been a mercy, if only he
had been killed outright."
"Hush!" Olive turned upon him sternly; sternly she spoke. "That's not
for us to say, Dolph. There's a plan back of things, you know, and Reed
is only part of the plan."
There came a short silence. Then Dolph spoke, not angrily, yet with
decision.
"Olive, I think I am just a little bit ashamed of you for that. I'm
willing to be a fatalist, and say it was ordained from the beginning
that Opdyke must be flayed and hung up for the crows of time to pick;
but as for saying in a hushed voice that he is the especial object of
some wholly beneficent and divine plan, I can't do it, and I won't. A
thing like that would be enough to leave a trail of beastliness over
the whole mass of revealed religion; in the end it would turn one to a
veritable pagan. Is this the entrance to your bargain counter? Good
bye, then. And, for heaven's sake, remember that sometimes the personal
hurt of a thing may blind a man to the ultimate and underlying
beneficence of the plan that knocked him over. Watch Opdyke, not when
he is swearing picturesquely, but when his mouth shuts and gets white
around the corners with the mental pain, not the physical; and then you
will take in what I mean." And Dolph, his face uncommonly grave and
overcast, nodded shortly and went on his way, his fists stuffed into
his pockets and his grim face half buried in his cavernous collar.
And, meanwhile, the poor "puffic' fibbous" lay and fidgetted uneasily,
while he wondered why Olive Keltridge had chosen that day, of all days,
to delay her customary call. She was not ill. Ramsdell, his nurse, had
seen her pass the house, that morning, walking with the swift, alert
step which Opdyke knew so well, the step that, in the old days, had
accompanied his boyish explorations of every by-path in the region. No;
something had detained her. She would surely be in later; and Reed
strained his ears, hour after hour, to listen for the buzz of the
front-door bell.
At last it buzzed, and the long form relaxed its stiffening. Half past
five! That meant the shortest possible time for talk. Still, it would
be better than nothing; the half-loaf would keep him from going hungry
to bed. His eyes were eager, as he watched the door. Then the eagerness
went out of them. The door swung open. Not Olive, but Prather, the
fussy little novelist, came in. Opdyke's lean fingers shut savagely
upon the rug that covered him. It would have been a relief if he could
have torn it into tatters.
Later, that night, after Ramsdell had shunted him back into bed, and
had covered him up as carefully as one covers a six-months baby, and
had put the room in order for the night, and then had uttered his
nightly query if that was "really hall, sir," left to himself, Reed
Opdyke set out to become very philosophical as concerned his
predicament. He merely succeeded in becoming very conscious of his
utter, aching loneliness, the loneliness which only comes to those
suddenly deprived of action.
Of course, he acknowledged to himself, a man of his training and
experience ought to have untold possibilities of interest inherent in
himself. He ought to be able to dip a bucket into his brain, and pull
it up, dripping with all sorts of new and amusing thoughts which should
keep him brilliant company for hours and hours. He ought to be able to
lose the consciousness of the narrow present in the wide sweep of his
past memories. He ought to be able to blockade his mind to any
speculations as concerned his future usefulness by raising up a perfect
barricade of past memories, and then by sitting down on top of the
barricade and gloating because it was a little higher than that upbuilt
by the next man.
Moreover, when those purely personal interests failed him, if purely
personal interests did ever fail a man, he had only to summon Ramsdell
and set him to reading aloud to him. To be sure, Ramsdell had a trick
of chopping up his sentences into separate words, as the primary-school
child spells its words by separate letters. Still, if it destroyed
somewhat of the sense, it at least increased the interest, since only
the most profound attention could discover the pith of any paragraph,
when every syllable in that paragraph was uttered with the same
deliberate stress.
And then there was his father. To Opdyke's certain knowledge, the good
professor curtailed by hours and hours and hours his more congenial
occupations for the sake of helping his son to work out the chess
problems in which they both were taking a perfunctory delight. Reed did
unfeignedly enjoy his father's company; but that was no reason he
should reduce him to a captivity akin to his own. How long had it
lasted, anyhow? May, June--nine months. And, in all that time, Olive
never had missed, until to-day.
Opdyke made a wry face at the darkness. So he had come back to that,
after all the fuss. What a kid he was, despite his six-feet three, and
the time he had gone under the knife, unwincing, but fully conscious,
because his heart was weak just then and the doctors were afraid of
anæsthetics! Afterwards, when the affair was safely over, they had said
things about his pluck. And now here he was, bewailing his fate because
Olive had, just the once, failed to put in her appearance for her daily
call. Pluck be hanged! And Olive had been wonderfully loyal, all these
months. Knowing her popularity abroad and her busy life at home, he
could not fail to be aware, when he stopped to think about it, that she
must have given up any amount of pleasanter engagements, for the simple
sake of coming to see him.
What made her do it, anyway? Liking? Conscience?
Opdyke gritted his teeth. One accepts liking with all due gratitude,
however far it may be removed from any sentiment. It is a wholly
different thing to feel one's self the object of a conscientious
visitation. In the latter case, one longs to throw a whiskbroom at the
head of the entering guest, longs to have it hit him, brush end on.
Moreover, it is a peculiarity of self-communion in the watches of the
night, to have the least lovely theory strike one as the more
unassailable. Therefore, without delay, Reed Opdyke adopted the belief
in Olive's conscientious devotedness to his welfare. Indeed, between
the pangs where the points of his new theory pricked him sorely, he
found plenty of room to wonder why the idea had not occurred to him
till then. What an insufferable ass he was, to have been thinking that
her frequent calls had been due to any other motive! He had been
looking upon himself, in spite of his flatness, as being to all intents
and purposes her social equal. Now, without warning, he was driven to
relegate himself to the lower levels of a sort of all-year Lenten
penance.
All-year! Yes, that was it. That was the secret of her failure to come
in, that day. Or, rather, for Opdyke was nothing, if not accurate, the
day before. It was to-morrow now. The clock had struck one, long ago.
Or was it half-past? He always did lose count, in those three
successive ones. Anyway, Olive's benevolent zeal had flagged a little,
before the demands made by a chronic case. Opdyke gritted his teeth
anew, as he acknowledged to himself that he was fast becoming
desperately chronic. Then his breath caught at the word. The worst of
his forecastings had never hit on anything so bad as that. And all the
others knew it; perhaps they had known it for some time. That was the
reason, of course, that the number of his calls had been falling off a
good deal lately; their charitable courage had ebbed and then ended
before so permanent a proposition.
Olive had known it, too; her father would have told her first of all.
And, until now, her loyalty had still held good. Dolph, too, would know
it. Indeed, they all of them had known it, all with the sole exception
of himself, the victim. They had known it and had talked it over
together, had talked him over, him, Reed Opdyke, late consulting
engineer for the Colorado Limited--
And then, across the stillness of the dusky room, there came a sound,
husky, strangled, a sound strangely like a sob.
Next morning, Opdyke faced the doctor, wan, but plucky.
"Doctor," he said; "I want those fellows to come up from New York
again, to look me over."
The doctor stared at him, a moment.
"What's the use?" he said then.
Reed's smile was grim.
"That's what I want to know. It's time that they found out, if they're
ever going to."
The doctor's glasses fell off with a click, and then hung, swinging,
from their thick black cord. When their oscillation had all ended,--
"What has started up your curiosity just now, Reed?"
"Signs of the times, I suppose," Reed answered crisply. "What's more,
doctor, I don't quite like them."
Bending forward, the doctor laid a steady hand upon the lean wrist
beside him. As he had supposed, the pulse was leaping with a furious
unsteadiness.
"Who taught a mere engineer like you to read the signs?" he demanded.