"What did you do in this case?" he inquired, with more than a show of
interest.
"Called in a policeman to see fair play. As it happened, he had a child
of his own, so he fell to work in earnest. We turned out the woman,
packed off the family into the next room, and went to work with oil and
cotton. I'm afraid it was too late to do much good. If it was, though,
I'll promise you I'll make Rome howl."
"Can you?" Reed asked practically.
"At least, I can try. As I say, I'm fond of babies; they have so much
potential humanity bottled up inside of them. I will not have them
slaughtered, if I can help it." Then, to all seeming, he digressed
sharply. "By the way, Reed, have you seen the Brenton baby? No; of
course you haven't. It's five months, now, ugly as sin, and the
brightest little youngster you ever set your eyes on."
Opdyke stirred himself to a show of interest that was far from genuine.
He never had felt himself especially drawn to babies; they seemed to
him mussy and invertebrate. In fact, he realized with disconcerting
suddenness, they shared some of his own least lovely attributes.
However, whether the subject interested him or not, he would keep it up
as long as he could, for the simple sake of lengthening out the
doctor's visit. Therefore he said,--
"Brenton is immensely pleased with it."
"Well he may be. The baby is a charming little beggar, full of
ingratiating tricks, and anybody knows Brenton needs everything of that
kind he can get." Then swiftly the doctor brought his digression to a
focus. "Well, that's just a case in point," he said triumphantly.
Opdyke laughed.
"Really, doctor, I'm afraid I don't quite follow," he said.
"Your fault, boy. You've not been paying proper attention to me; you
were off on a sidetrack of your own laying. I was talking about the
Brenton baby and its chances to get fair play, especially when it comes
to teeth."
Light dawned on Opdyke.
"Oh, I see. You mean Mrs. Brenton may take a hand?"
"Morally sure. It's her child, too, worse luck! There is no legal help
for the bad matter--yet. She will insist upon it that sin has a claim
upon the child, and advise it to hoist itself above the sin."
"Is she such a--"
The doctor interrupted, less out of charity for Mrs. Brenton than from
his own impatient testiness.
"Wait and see, boy. Wait and see. It is quite evident that she's a gone
case, that nothing can save her. Sometimes, I even shudder for her
husband."
"Brenton? He's immune."
"There's never any telling. She and her friends probably have been at
work with pick and shovel, for months, trying to undermine his
foundations. They are an insidious crew, Reed, totally insidious. If a
man is the least bit nervous, their absent-treatment methods get in
their work with a fatal effect sometimes. I've been watching them for
years. They mine and countermine, until it isn't safe to predict who is
immune and who isn't. For all either of us know, you may be doomed to
be the next victim. If you are, though, send for me. I'll cure you of
it, if it takes a dose of lysol. Well, good bye, boy. I'll drop in
again, within a day or so."
The doctor went his way, flinging back a trail of chaff as long as his
voice could carry to the room above, a room curiously dim and still, it
seemed to him, as he came out into the strident sunshine of the July
day. Once in the street, moreover, and safely out of range of Opdyke's
windows, his fun dropped from him, and he shook his sturdy shoulders,
as if he were trying to shake them free from an ugly, yet invisible,
burden.
"There's a change there," he muttered to himself; "and I'll be hanged
if I can analyze it. It's a curious sort of settling down of the boy's
whole nature, as if he had thrown off some maddening strain or other,
as if he were getting some new sort of grip upon himself. I wonder what
it is. He's not better, nor worse; it can't be his health, then.
Bodily, he is just about holding his own; nervously, he is steadying. I
believe I'll talk it up with Olive; he may have given her a clue."
Olive, however, questioned, had no ideas upon the subject. She too had
noticed the change, had felt it, rather; it was too slight really to be
noticed. She had wondered at it. It was as if Opdyke were slowly
tightening all his contacts with what of life there still was left to
him, determining to make the best of a bad matter, and to extract all
the enjoyment he was able out of his narrowing surroundings.
Reason about the cause of this as Olive would, she could not fathom it.
Was Opdyke merely sickening of the individual members of his scanty
calling list, and seeking to increase its variety? Or was he slowly
gathering up some of the broken ties, ready for the day when once more
he should leave his prison and walk out among them, a free man? Of two
things, though, Olive was assured. The change had started a good two
months earlier, had dated, as nearly as she could reckon backwards,
from the time of Whittenden's brief visit. And the change, whatever
else its alterations in the life of Opdyke, had made not one grain of
difference with their friendship. Indeed, it seemed to Olive now and
then that Opdyke turned to her society the more eagerly after a
protracted season of receiving varied calls. However, well he might
turn to Olive! It was fifteen months, now, since his accident, fifteen
months that the brace of New York surgeons had professed their
inability to predict a future. Uncertainty like that is bound to tell
on any man; and, throughout it all, Olive Keltridge never once had
failed him.
That Opdyke was renewing, after his limited fashion, many of his old
associations was a fact evident to the whole town. The knowledge that
he was lowering his year-long barricade, as a matter of course, brought
to his door a horde of visitors bound to be more or less unwelcome. As
a matter of fact, on one pretext or another, nine tenths of them were
turned away. Ramsdell saw to that. Despite his misplaced aspirates, he
possessed a perfect genius for uttering gracious fibs with a totally
impenetrable smile of deprecation. Moreover, he knew from long
experience Reed's choice in people, and he read strangers keenly.
Therefore more than one potential visitor, moved by a combination of
curiosity and benevolence, was assured that "Mr. Hopdyke 'as 'ad a very
bad night, and is just gone off to sleep," although Dolph Dennison's
coat tails or Olive Keltridge's linen skirt might have been vanishing
through the doorway as the less welcome guest came in at the front
gate. In spite of the moral certainties of the later guest, it was
impossible to prove that Ramsdell was lying flagrantly. One could only
smile, and hand in a card, with the agreeable surety that it would be
referred to the upstairs potentate and pigeonholed in Ramsdell's
retentive memory as ticket for admission later on, or else a permanent
rejection label, past all argument or gainsaying.
Prather, the novelist, was one of the first names on the lengthening
list of those who were to be admitted at all sorts of hours. Reed
Opdyke accepted him in mirthful gratitude to the Providence which had
arranged so equable a _quid pro quo_. Prather was manifestly out for
copy, despite his constant disavowals of what he termed an envious
slander hatched by Philistine minds. Reed Opdyke's sense of humour was
still sufficiently acute to assure him that there was every possibility
that, at some more or less remote period, he would find a full-length
portrait of himself in Prather's pages, a portrait all the more easily
recognizable by reason of the disguises which would draw attention to
the essential human fact hidden behind their veils. On the other hand,
however, Prather himself was offering to Reed no small amusement. To a
man used to the wide spaces of the mountain landscapes, to the vast
secrets hidden within the bowels of the mines, it seemed little short
of the incredible that any human being at all worthy of the name could
be so infinitely fussy over trifles, could wear himself to shreds over
framing a bit of repartee, could spend a tortured morning, reducing to
the limits of a rhythmic paragraph the illimitable glories of the earth
and sky. And the ways by which he sought to carry out his achievement!
These baffled any comprehension born of Opdyke's brain.
The day after the doctor's expressed anxiety as concerned the Brenton
baby, Prather, coming to call, was more than ordinarily specific.
"My dear fellow, I am tired to death," he said, as he sat down at
Opdyke's side, hitched up his trousers to prevent unseemly bagging and
smoothed his coat into position.
"Working?" Reed queried.
"Like a dog. At least, that's the accepted phrase. The fact is, my
terrier snored aloud, all the time I was about it. No. I assure you, I
didn't read my stuff to him, as I went on." And Prather paused to laugh
merrily at his own humour. Indeed, it was his own appreciation of his
humour which led him to his frequent calls on Reed, for the little man
was generous at heart, and loath to waste a really clever thing, when
it might be doing untold good. "But still," he went on; "it shows the
fallacy of the phrase. I work like a dog, and the real dog slumbers.
Good joke, that! But, for a fact, I have been working."
"Another novel?"
"Yes. I tell the publishers it must be my swan song. Really, I am
getting an old man. But they refuse to see it; I expect they will keep
me in harness till I am--in my dotage," he added, with a reckless
disregard of any possible comment which the phrase might call up in
Opdyke's mind.