It was not until well on in the next day that the two men spoke of
Brenton. Indeed, all their talk, next morning, was plainest platitude.
Instinctively each of them realized that the other needed a little time
to rally from the strain of the night before. Accordingly, though eight
o'clock found them breakfasting together in Opdyke's room, Ramsdell, in
attendance on his patient's numerous needs of help, acknowledged to
himself that he never saw a patient and a priest act like such a pair
of schoolboys squabbling over jam. Afterwards, Ramsdell dismissed and
sent off on an errand, Whittenden smoked, and Opdyke lay and watched
him in a contented reverie too deep for words. As he had said to
Brenton, once on a time, it was a relief to get even a bad matter out
and over. Later, he was quite well aware, he would take up the subject
with his friend once more; but the week was nearly all before them.
They could afford to rest a little, and let the healing silence fall
between them.
Indeed, in all the morning, they exchanged a scanty dozen sentences. An
occasional questioning glance, an inarticulate grunt of comprehension:
after their long night vigil, this was all for which either of them
felt inclined. In the meantime, Reed's face was losing somewhat of its
look of strain; Whittenden's clear eyes were growing gentler, yet
infinitely more full of courage. To both of them, the future was less
of a blank wall than it had seemed, the night before. Already, they
both were gathering a little more perspective.
Towards noon, though, Opdyke roused himself and spoke.
"This isn't going to do for you, Whittenden," he said, with decision.
"If you sit about like this, I'll have you tucked up beside me, within
the week. You've got to have some exercise. I'll set Ramsdell to
telephoning on your behalf, if you will call him. Yes, I can telephone;
but it's not too easy, so I generally pass the job on to him. Who'll
you have for your escort: Olive Keltridge, or Brenton?"
"Brenton?"
"Scott Brenton. Surely, I wrote you he was here."
Whittenden laughed.
"If you did, it never got put in. Most likely Ramsdell balked at the
spelling. You mean the Brenton that I married?"
"Yes, worse luck!"
The rector nodded.
"It's come to that; has it? I'm not too much surprised. What is he
doing here?"
"Preaching, of course."
"No of course about it. He was more a physicist than anything else, it
seemed to me. I had an idea he'd have gone in for teaching before now."
"Give him time."
"What do you mean?"
"I'd rather you saw for yourself. In fact, I think we'll give up any
idea of Olive, for the afternoon, and telephone to Brenton to come and
take you for a walk. Telephone him yourself, for that matter."
"He may be busy."
"Not he. He has a curate now to do his routine work, and he frisks
about, a good deal as he pleases. Poor beggar! He takes his very
frisking sadly, nowadays. And then, after you've nailed him, would you
call up Olive, nine-two-three, and tell her I'm to be abandoned, all
afternoon. She may take the hint."
"Shall you tell her things, Reed?"
"Not yet?" Reed spoke crisply.
"Why not? I fancy she'd be one to understand."
"So she would. She always does, always has done, ever since she was
born, and we all take it out of her accordingly, a good deal as we take
it out of you. However, I don't want her to know it, yet awhile. I'd
prefer to understand the thing a little better, myself, before I pass
it on. And, of course, you won't speak of it to Brenton?"
And Whittenden shook his head. He shook it with the more surety,
because of his old-time memories of Brenton, the lank, ill-nourished
youth with the crude manners and the lambent eyes. One did not tell
things to a man like that; one merely listened, and then gave advice.
That was really all. And then, his telephoning finished, Whittenden
fell to wondering into what sort of a man Scott Brenton, the embryo,
had turned. The voice was reassuring, also the accent. Both spoke of
vast improvement in their owner.
Two hours later, Whittenden, balancing himself on the window sill at
Opdyke's side, glanced down at the walk below him, as he heard a step
draw near.
"You don't suppose that can be Brenton!" he exclaimed. "It looks like
him; but, ye immortals, how he's changed!"
"Haven't we all?" Reed queried dryly.
"Not so much. Why, man, he's actually groomed, and he walks without
stepping on the edges of his own boots. Brenton!" He leaned out of the
window, calling like a boy, "Hi, Brenton! Is it really you?"
And so they met, after the years. Moreover, meeting, it was as if the
years they had spent apart from each other, instead of increasing the
distance between them, had brought them to a closer contact than any of
which they hitherto had dreamed.
According to their former custom, they tramped for miles, that afternoon,
and talked as steadily as they tramped. At first sight, Whittenden had
been delighted at the change in his companion; at a second, the delight
increased, and the wonder mingled with it. It was little short of the
marvellous to the rector of Saint-Luke-the-Good-Physician's that the
raw, eager-minded youngster he had known as clerklet in a mountain inn
could have developed into this personable man, a good talker, a good
critic of this world's valuations, and, withal, not a little magnetic
in his personal charm. At the first glance and the second, Whittenden
rejoiced at what he saw. At the third, he doubted. The eyes were
lambent still, but far less happy; the lips were more sensitive, albeit
firmer, and every now and then there came a tired droop about their
corners, as if life, even to the prosperous and popular rector of Saint
Peter's, were just a degree less full of promise than he had fancied it
would be. The raw young stripling had hoped all things; the mature,
seemingly well-poised rector was having some little difficulty to prove
them good.
What was the matter, Whittenden asked himself. The ineradicable germs
of pessimistic Calvinism? The uncongenial wife? Some lurking weakness
in the man himself, that forbade his ever coming to a full content?
Some residuum of jealous self-distrust, left over from his primitive
beginnings, and causing him to look on every prosperous man as on a
potential foe? The alternatives were too many and too complex to be
settled by a two-hour study of the man beside him. Therefore
Whittenden, being Whittenden, ended by putting the direct question.
"In the final analysis, Brenton, what are you making out of your life?"
The answer astounded him by its terse abruptness.
"Chaos," Brenton said.
Whittenden's mouth settled to the outlines of a whistle, albeit no
sound came out of it.
"_Chaos_ is a good, strong word, Brenton," he said, after a minute.
"Exactly what is it that you mean?"
Brenton stated his meaning, without mincing matters in the least.
"I mean that I have no more business to be preaching in Saint Peter's
than I would have to be holding forth upon the eternal fires of the
most azure Calvinism."
"But you made your choice deliberately."
Brenton turned on him with some impatience.
"What if I did? What is the choice of a boy of twenty, anyway? Of a
cocksure, ambitious boy just breaking out of leading strings? I did
choose--and yet, not so freely as I seemed to do. There was my mother
in the background."
"Of course," Whittenden assented quietly. "Who else, better?"
"No one. Only--" Then Brenton curbed his rising excitement. Just as of
old, he felt the overmastering wish to talk things out with Whittenden;
but his maturity shrank from the idea, as the untrained boy had never
done. "Anyway," he went on quietly; "I made my choice. I still believe
it was the best choice open to me at the time. The only trouble is that
I outgrew it."
"Or it outgrew you," Whittenden suggested coolly.
The dark tide surged up across Scott Brenton's lean cheeks.
"Perhaps," he assented curtly. "Still, Whittenden, it doesn't seem that
way to me. I feel myself tied down at every point."
"What ties you?"
"Creeds." Then Brenton laughed a little harshly. "Doubts, rather."
Whittenden looked him in the eyes.
"What is it that you're doubting, Brenton?" he inquired.
"Everything. All the old landmarks of the ages," Brenton told him
restively.
Whittenden smiled.
"You had parted with some of them, when I last said good bye to you,"
he reminded Brenton. "You had quenched the sulphurous flames, and
explained the more surprising of the miracles. You even had a doubt
about creation's having been achieved in one hundred and seventy hours.
What else has gone upon your conscientious scruples?"
"Most things, including a good share of the Thirty-Nine Articles,"
Brenton made curt answer. "Moreover, I have rewritten my early chapter
in the Book of Genesis, until it says _Like unto God, knowing_, not
_Good and Evil_, but _the Law_."
"Hm-m-m!" Whittenden said slowly. "That isn't quite as original as you
may think for, Brenton. A good many of us others have employed that
form of the phrase before. Still, there's no use in taking it for a
sort of cudgel, to knock down the people who still cling to the dear
old phrases. And they are good phrases, too. They deserve to be revered
for their antiquity, and for the hold they have kept upon all mankind;
still I don't, myself, see why you need to take them any more literally
than you do some of those old resonant lines of Homer. It's the spirit
of the thing we're after, not the barren phrases."
"Then what's the good of all your creed?" Brenton demanded shortly.
"Our creed," Brenton corrected him quite gently; more gently, even,
than he had spoken to Reed Opdyke on the night before. Indeed, Scott
Brenton seemed to him vastly more in need of gentleness than did
Opdyke. His trouble was as deep-seated; moreover, it was complicated by
a curious ingrained weakness which, Whittenden judged, it would be hard
for him to down. In Opdyke's place, Brenton would have turned his face
to the wall and made a long, long moan. In Brenton's position, Opdyke
would have kept his flags flying gayly, as long as there was a tatter
of them left.
Now, Brenton's accent showed that he resented the correction.
"Ours, if you will; at least, for the present. But, after all, what is
the good?"
Whittenden's reply came promptly.
"A common platform, where we can stand side by side, while we are doing
our individual work."
"But, if you don't believe in it?"
A sudden gleam of mirth came into Whittenden's clear eyes.
"Do you expect to put your foot on every single plank in any platform,
Brenton? If you do, you'll need to have it built just to your measure.
It seems to me that, in course of time, you'd find it a little lonely,
to say nothing of the minor fact that people work together all the
better for being on some sort of a common basis."
"But is work the only thing?" Brenton queried rather absently.