"But think how lonesome you would be," he reminded her.
And Olive went her way, thinking. Indeed, she thought so earnestly
about the fact that it was some time before she noticed that the
phrase, still ringing in her ears, was in the optative, not in the
simple future which she herself would have used in that connection. Was
her father keeping things back from her, by way of helping her to
maintain her poise? Did Reed himself know things of which she was in
ignorance? Foolish, especially when they were friends and nothing more!
It was a friend's place to know the worst of things, and help him bear
them. The questions, though, stayed with her for many days. They had
been, indeed, at the back of her abstraction, when Dolph Dennison had
greeted her, that January morning.
Mingled with them, too, had been some other questions, questions akin
to those lashing Scott Brenton's brain. However, in the case of Olive,
they were incidental. With Brenton, they shook the foundations of his
whole professional career.
Indeed, it seemed to Brenton, looking down upon the still, straight
figure of his friend, that it was little short of the incredible that
Reed Opdyke, the hilarious, the irresponsible, could be the present
cause and focus of a storm which was bidding fair to make a shipwreck
of his life. If only Brenton had been aware how, long ago, Opdyke had
been detailed to show him life as it was, and to teach him what an ass
he easily might become, there would have been a certain fitness, to his
mind, in the later situation. Once more Opdyke had been detailed to
show him life as it really was, life and some other things, to point
out to him, not what an ass he might, but what a hypocrite he had,
become.
Nowadays, it was that latter word which Brenton was using, as a
spiritual flail, upon himself. Reed Opdyke's overthrow no longer filled
the whole horizon of his doubtings. It was merely the starting-point
whence he had embarked on a voyage long and perilous. At first, he only
had felt a vague suspicion concerning the inherent justice and clemency
of the manifestations of special Providence, a little wondering whether
the God whom he had chosen to preach to all men was of necessity so
much more merciful and fatherly in his dealing with the sons of men
than was the irate God of all the line of Parson Wheelers. They would
have laid down the law quite frankly that Reed Opdyke had been
overtaken and cut down, in revenge for his more or less hereditary
sins. He was holding forth to the effect that Reed had been smitten
sorely, regretfully, in order that his spiritual betterment be effected
with all due promptness, and with all due attention from his fellow
men. To how much, after all, did the difference amount?
Sunday after Sunday during those interminable eight months when Reed
had lain still and gritted his teeth to keep himself from waxing too
profane, he himself, Scott Brenton, robed in the stainless garb of his
holy calling, had stood up before his people and stained his conscience
by uttering platitudes to that effect. Then, sermon over and the
service, he had gone away and lavished upon Reed Opdyke a purely human
sympathy that was totally unlike the exalted pity of the priest. In
other words, as concerned Reed Opdyke, Brenton's attitude was
two-faced, human, priestly; two-faced, and the two faces were mutually
antagonistic.
Worst of all, the doubtings did not focus themselves upon the solitary
instance. They spread and spread, until they honeycombed his entire
belief. Was God sometimes a little bit vindictive? Did the All-merciful
have moods that would have shamed created man? Did the All-Father now
and then punish, out of sheer malevolence, or in an attempt to get even
with man for the results of instincts He had put into him at first
creation? Was that first creation final in its wisdom; or had it been a
partial blunder, needing the interference of a heaven-sent, earth-born
Intercessor to set the matter right? Could the All-Wise make a blunder?
If not, then why the Atoning Son? In short, aside from some mysterious
force which had set certain laws to rolling like mammoth, ever-growing
snowballs down the slopes of time and on into a cold, bleak eternity
where everything was swept up in their courses, was there ever any--
At this point in his never-ending circle, Scott Brenton usually started
to his feet, seized his hat and stick and shut his study door behind
him. All out-doors was too small to think in. Violent exercise was the
one fit setting for such thought. In the end, though, the wish for
exercise only took him down across the valley, and spent itself just as
he reached the river's brink. There, on the long white bridge, he stood
by the half-hour at a time, his arms folded on the rail, his eyes fixed
vaguely on the wintry current, a steel-gray stretch of sliding,
slipping water down which the rough white ice cakes came floating,
drifting silently, relentlessly, unendingly, to crash against the stone
piers of the bridge. In that same way, out of the gray, bleak
perspective of his thoughts, the doubts came floating, drifting down
upon him with the same relentlessness, to crash against the foundations
of his belief. Between the two of them, however, there was this
difference: the piers were never chipped or shaken by the ice cakes. He
could not say as much as that for his beliefs.
It was all very well to choose, as he had done, a more elastic creed,
to fling his life's allegiance into a communion whose tenets were so
framed as to adjust themselves to the strain of purely individual
interpretation. One must have tenets to interpret. What happened, when
they became untenable? One might construe the Nicene Creed into a round
dozen different 'ologies. A mere framework, a skeleton of belief such
as the Apostles' Creed was capable of no such reconstruction. One
either believed it, or one did not. Unless--Did anybody ever believe
any one thing in its unmodified entirety? Did anybody ever give a
categorical denial to any clause of any creed? That was the worst of
the whole matter. Half-doubts and half-beliefs crisscrossed and
interlaced at every point. One day's doctrine was the next day's error.
It was well-nigh impossible to draw a straight line, no matter how
short, and take one's stand upon it, and say out boldly _I believe_,
and then add just as boldly _I shall keep on believing_.
After all, though, that was what he professed to do. The outward
setting of his life, from the early celebration of a Sunday morning
down to the virtuous reversal of his collar buttons, was the badge of
his profession. In his secret heart, as the Advent season came and
went, and as the Lenten penances drew near, Scott Brenton had no way of
telling where in reality he stood; yet, day by day and week by week, he
had to step forth before his congregation and toilsomely erect a
platform of belief upon which, in the end, his feet refused to mount.
Instead, with every semblance of priestly humility, he stood aside and
assisted his hearers to clamber up ahead of him. Once there, he knew
that he could count upon their smug enjoyment of their own eminence to
make them forget to notice whether or not he took his stand beside
them.
Of course, he despised himself acutely. Of course, he had hours and
moods when he felt that he must lift up his voice and shout aloud to
all men--What? That he did not know exactly what he did believe? For,
in reality, that was all the whole pother was amounting to. What was
the use in starting the alarm, when the whole great crisis might be
merely a matter of imagination, of indigestion, even, as Doctor
Keltridge had diagnosed it? In that case, the best, the only remedy was
work.
And work Scott Brenton did. The parish was growing, month by month. The
mere detail of its executive alone was enough to tax the strength of
most men. Brenton managed it, however; he also contrived to get into
the day's work as much of pastoral visitation as he could accomplish,
without running into the adulation with which he was uncomfortably
aware he was surrounded. The evenings and a good portion of the nights
he devoted to his sermons which never had been so brilliant as now,
never so vibrant with the essential truths of personal morality, of
earnest service. Indeed, his professional life, just then, seemed
rounding itself into a never-ending circle: the harder he worked, the
more inspiring were his sermons, thus broadening and deepening his
grasp upon his hearers. And this, in turn, put new vitality into his
parish needs, and so increased his work past any computation.
It would have been no especial wonder, then, that this revolving circle
should shut him in entirely from any chance to see an old chum like
Reed Opdyke. Opdyke himself accepted the explanation. Brenton knew it
was false, and flagrantly so. He longed acutely to sit down beside his
old friend, to unburden himself to the very dregs and then to sort over
the dregs, discussing them and judging them in the light of Opdyke's
old, shrewd common sense and in the clearer light of Opdyke's new and
illuminating experience. How could he, though, when the whole mental
situation had evolved itself over his kicking against the pricks
administered to his old-time idol? To discuss the matter with Reed
Opdyke would have been equivalent to sticking a knife into him, and
then inviting him to take a microscope and study the composition of the
drops that oozed up around the knife blade.
And then, one day, he yielded to temptation, and went to call upon Reed
Opdyke, not to indulge in theoretical discussion concerning the
accident viewed as an exponent of universal truths; but for the simple
sake of seeing his old friend and exchanging greetings. Indeed, where
was the use of wasting the good material of friendship by seeking to
convert it to a touchstone whereby to measure up one's theological
beliefs? Reed was Reed, albeit flattened out upon his long, lean back,
and not a culture-pan for psychological germs.
A good deal to his own regret, Brenton met Olive Keltridge on the
Opdyke's steps.
"I'm so glad you've come, Mr. Brenton," she said cordially, as she gave
him her hand in greeting. "Reed has been wondering what had become of
you. No; not that, exactly. My father and I both had told him that
Saint Peter's was working you to death. Still, he has missed you, and
his father is actually pathetic in his mourning. He told me, yesterday,
that you had never seen his new hood. Really, it sounded rather
feminine, his pride in that new hood of his. You'd have thought it must
be a creation of chiffon and ermine, not of ordinary brick and mortar.
How is Mrs. Brenton?"
"Quite well, thank you."
The maid was slow about appearing, and Olive chatted on, by way of
filling up the time.
"I'm glad. It is two weeks or so, since I have seen her. She told me
then that she hardly caught a glimpse of you, all day long. Indeed, she
was almost as pathetic about it as Professor Opdyke. It really is too
bad for the church to keep you quite so busy."
"But, if it is my work?" Brenton interrupted banally, for, in his
secret heart, he was painfully aware that it was not the church alone
which kept him so preoccupied that his preoccupation had come to be an
occupation on its own account.
"Your work needn't be suicidal," Olive objected. "My father, even, says
it is taking it out of you rather badly, and he insists that they must
hurry about the curate. Seven hours a day is enough for any man, he
says; and he declares that you are working twenty. In fact," Olive
looked up at him to carry home her admonition; "he says that he has
warned you more than once that you must slow down a little, or else
stop."
"At least, that would be restful." Brenton spoke more to himself than
Olive.
But she turned on him.
"Reed hasn't found it so," she said.
Brenton's face changed, clouded.
"That is an extreme case, Miss Keltridge." Then, with an effort, he
changed the subject and became frankly personal. "How is Opdyke getting
on?"
She shook her head.
"He isn't getting on, unless you count as the _on_ a distinct gain in
the beauty of holiness. No," she interrupted him with a sudden gesture;
"I don't mean the kind of holiness you preach, on Sunday; but the kind
we both of us admire, on Monday morning."
"Is there a difference?" he queried, while his gray eyes searched her
face.
She met his eyes unflinchingly.
"Isn't there? Preacher that you are, I defy you to deny it."
And then the maid opened the door before them, and they passed in.
Once in the hall, however, Olive changed her mind about going up to
Reed's room.
"I think I'll wait, Mr. Brenton," she said suddenly. "Really, I have
nothing much ahead of me, to-day. I can come in later, just as well;
and you are a novelty, in these latter days. Go on alone, and talk
man-talk to Reed. It will do him any amount more good than dozens of my
visitations. Just don't tell him I was here, and then he won't have any
qualms about holding on to you till the last possible minute. I'll come
in again."
"But--"
"No _but_ about it. I tell you he needs men. In fact, we all do, now
and then, no matter how we try to veil the fact. If you want proof, ask
any sane woman whether she would rather go out to luncheon or to
dinner. Granted her sincerity isn't complicated with questionings about
a frock, she will declare for dinner, every time. Go in, though. This
is most irrelevant. Moreover, by way of living up to my own theory, I'm
going to take the time when you are out of the way, to drop in on Mrs.
Brenton. Good bye, and--be very good to Reed."
The door shut behind her, and Brenton went on up the stairs, wondering,
at every step, what had been the meaning of her final phrase. Meaning
it obviously had. Olive rarely talked at random to any of her
acquaintances; never at all, it seemed to Brenton, in thinking backward
over the way, from point to point, her mind apparently had been
marching on beside his own. Did her intuitions never fail her, in the
case of any man? Or was it that her clairvoyance focussed itself on
him? Did she, indeed, actually comprehend her old friend, Opdyke, one
half so clearly as she did himself? Priest though he was, the man in
him had an instant of hoping not.
It was now two years and more, since Olive and Brenton first had met.
In the forced intimacy of a narrow social circle, they had been thrown
together often; the churchly relation between Brenton and his senior
warden had increased the frequency. As a rule, the meetings had been at
the Keltridges'. The doctor liked Scott; Kathryn did not like Olive.
However, though the invitations had been nearly always upon the one
side, in any case, hostess or guest, there had been no way of
eradicating Olive.
Olive and Brenton, then, had met almost constantly, during those last
two years. They had discussed together quite impersonally all things
under the sun and above the moon. Their personal talks had been few and
very short. None the less, Scott Brenton was quite well aware that no
one in the world knew his real self so well as Olive Keltridge. Aware
of it, however, he was fully conscious that the fact caused him no
regrets at all. Catie, as he still called her on occasion, should, of
course, have been the one to comprehend him; but, like the cicada, he
merely iterated "Catie didn't." And comprehension is the primal need of
every man.