"Opdyke is hunting for a new assistant," he said.
Brenton, who had been sitting with his eyes fastened to the rug before
him, looked up at the doctor. Looking, his gray eyes were heavy, their
light temporarily extinct. Indeed, the old doctor, watching him
intently from above his pipe, wondered a little if that light would
ever come again. He was quite well aware that it burns only in eyes
bent hopefully upon a remote, receding, yet conquerable ideal. Once
extinguished, it is well-nigh impossible to kindle it again.
"What is that for?" Brenton queried, with the utter listlessness of a
man whose sole absorption is in himself.
"A variety of reasons, I suspect. To be sure, he himself only declares
one: the insistent professional calls on his time from outside: books,
magazine articles, lectures, and all that. It is wonderfully good for
the college to have a man of his calibre on its list. As a trustee, it
is my notion that they'd much better give him anything he happens to
want, for fear, if they refuse, he'll go out altogether."
"He wouldn't," Brenton said quickly.
"You never know, in a case like that of Opdyke. He has done grand work;
his record here is made and done with. He has outside calls enough to
fill up his time to the limit of his strength; he has enough money to
carry him in comparative luxury to the end of all things, even if he
never--"
"Professor Opdyke is no pot-boiler," Brenton interrupted. "It's not
money that he counts; it's the thing itself he's after."
"What thing?" the doctor asked, with seeming carelessness.
Brenton flashed into sudden fire.
"The finishing out his work. The trying to add one little bit to the
sum total of permanent knowledge. The kind of thing you do yourself,
doctor, once your patients give you time to get away from the trail of
their beastly aches and pains."
The doctor eyed his companion with a sort of grim amusement.
"That last phrase sounds suspicious, Brenton," he remarked. "Are you
also--"
Brenton did not wait for him to finish out the question.
"No; I am not," he snapped, with a testiness that would have been a
healthy mental symptom, had it not betrayed the fact that his nerves
were dangerously on edge.
The doctor, still watching him from above his pipe, judged it would be
well to change the subject.
"Besides," he added casually; "I fancy that Reed may be an entering
factor."
"Reed?"
"Yes, with his father. The suspense is telling on them all, telling
badly on the professor. From the point of view of the family physician,
I believe it is any amount worse than accepting even a surety of the
worst."
"What do you call the worst?" Brenton asked flatly.
"That Reed would have to lie there on his back, till the remotest end
of time."
For an instant, the old light flared up in Brenton's eyes. Rising, with
a backward thrust of his chair that sent it crashing against a table,
he tramped the length of the room and back again.
"God help him!" he said, low. "You think that such a thing is
possible?"
The doctor nodded curtly. He loved Reed as he would have loved a son of
his own, and it hurt him to put into words even the possibility.
"It is in the limits of the possible," he answered.
Again the tramp across the floor and back again. Then Brenton burst out
fiercely.
"And I can sit here and whimper about my fate, that I am the square peg
in the round hole, while he--Doctor Keltridge, you don't mean it has
come to that?"
"Not yet. I only said, what we all must know, that it is on the cards.
No one can tell whether they will turn up, or down. Of course, the fact
that the rallying comes so slowly is bound to make us fear that the
injury was worse than we thought at first. On the other hand, it is
almost out of the question to judge it with any accuracy. Do what we
will, we can't get inside Reed's body, and see for ourselves just what
reactions, if any, are going on in there. I wonder, Brenton," the
doctor faced him steadily; "if ever it has occurred to you that, in the
last analysis, pure science is often baffled by the personal equation
which comes into it, which defies all analysis, and which upsets the
whole of our calculations. If it were not for the fact that Reed's ego
is his own property, not ours, we could have settled this point about
his future, months on months ago. Beyond a certain limit, though, there
is no way for us to tell how far he responds to our experimental
treatment. If his muscles do twitch, well and good. If they almost
twitch and don't, no mortal mind outside of his can reckon how wide the
falling short has been. You can talk about pure, abstract, impersonal
science, till the moon turns to an Edam cheese. You can no more grasp
the initial fact of what that science really is, than you can follow
the example of the athletic cow. There's always the distorting lens of
one's own mind to be taken into consideration; quite often there's
another fellow's: the eye-piece of the compound microscope, and the
objective. Take them away, and what impression do you get?" The doctor
pulled himself abruptly out of his harangue. "You can't get any
science, without the muddling addition of an ego, Brenton; and,
moreover, there's a tentacle or two of every ego that sticks out beyond
the edges of the law, and demands a separate code for its own
management. It is in framing that separate code that we all fall down."
But, to his regret, Brenton was deaf to his harangue.
"You think," he was repeating; "that it may end in that?"
The doctor ruffled his hair until it stood on end, rampant and tousled
as a corn-husk mat.
"Good Lord, man! A doctor doesn't think things," he said, with sudden
ire. "Moreover, if he did, he wouldn't say them out. Else, where would
his patients be? You can frighten any man to death, by offering him a
premature glimpse into the next decade. One day at a time is enough for
most of us; more than some of us can manage. As for Reed, it is
impossible to testify at present; in the end, I fancy, he will be the
chief witness for the defence. Meanwhile, he's game. You don't find
him maundering supinely about his latter end. No! Do sit down. That
wasn't a back-hander, aimed at you, Brenton. I hit straight, or not at
all. I wish I could give you a tonic that would take away a little of
your blamed self-sensitiveness, if I can coin the term. You're as
unselfish as the rest of them, until you get hold of a bit of
impersonal slander. Then you seize it in your arms, and hold it on your
mental stomach like a mustard plaster. It doesn't do any good, though.
It hurts like thunder in the time of it, and it plays the deuce with
your later digestion."
Obediently Brenton sat down; or, to speak more accurately, was borne
down by the weight of the doctor's energetic denunciation. It was the
first time that he had found the doctor in such a mood as that.
Mercifully, Brenton had no inkling that he had brought it on himself by
his prelude to the talk. It would have shocked him unspeakably, had it
dawned upon him that Doctor Keltridge, within himself, was applying
profane adjectives to the spiritual doubtings of his rector. It would
have astounded him beyond all words, had he known how trivial to the
doctor's seasoned mind had seemed his own juggling touch upon the rival
claims of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Had Brenton held within himself
one tenth of Reed Opdyke's staying power, all would have come out right
in the end. The pieces of the puzzle would have fallen into their true
places. Instead, Scott Brenton, in his impatience, was apparently
determined to chop the pieces into smaller bits, and then to deface
their surfaces almost past recognition. Therefore it had seemed to
Doctor Keltridge the one way of escape from the whole pother had been
opened by his words, which he now repeated with a fresh emphasis that
he hoped would finally impress them upon Scott Brenton's ear.
"Yes; and so, with all this complication on his hands, the professor is
hunting for a new assistant."
This time, Brenton looked at him keenly.
"Are you telling that fact to me, for any especial reason, doctor?" he
demanded.
"Yes, to my shame, I am. By good rights, Brenton, I ought to order you
into a sanatorium, until you get over the desire to make an idiot of
yourself. I doubt, though, if it would do any good. I fancy that your
case is chronic, that you won't be happy till you've muddled your
intellectual salvation according to your own notions. If that's the
fact, the sooner you go about it, the better. Your hanging on at Saint
Peter's is only so much wear and tear upon your nerves. Ours, too, when
it comes to that. One doesn't get much sanctification out of a sermon
couched in glittering generalities and delivered by a rector with a
crumpled brow. Therefore the trustee of the college has told tales to
the doctor, and the doctor is hinting the gist of those tales to his
patient."
"Do you think I'd fill the place?" Brenton's voice surprised himself by
its unwonted quivering of eagerness.
"Depends on whether you get the chance," the doctor parried. "Moreover,
your getting the chance depends on what you think about your taking it.
There's another man talked about for the position; but I have a good
deal of say in the matter, and Opdyke has more. He considers you rather
a genius in his line, a wasted genius, and would jump at a chance to
have you put in under him as instructor. What do you think?"
Brenton's reply came without an instant's hesitation.
"I will take it, if it's offered me."
"You know it will shut Saint Peter's door to you for ever? In a case
like this, one can't go back again."
"I know," Brenton made brief assent.
"You realize all you are giving up?"
"I do."
"You know the world is full of potential Prathers; and you also know
what your wife will say? Does she understand what you have been going
through?"
Brenton's lips stiffened.
"I have not meant to keep anything back from her. How far she has
grasped all it has meant to me--However, in honour, I have done my
best."
And, despite the weakening drop of his voice on the final phrases, the
doctor believed him. Believing and likewise knowing Katharine, he
pitied Brenton from the bottom of his heart. After all, was the fellow
quite so invertebrate as he had sometimes seemed?
"Well, I will talk to Opdyke first, and then bring the matter up before
the rest of the trustees. There's a meeting, early in October. Best not
do anything until that is over. Then, in all decency, you will have to
give a little time to Saint Peter's. You can't well bolt off, like a
cook in a tantrum. Prepare their Christmas diet for them; and then go
into this other thing, directly after mid-years."
"But, feeling as I do, have I any right to keep on at Saint Peter's?"
Brenton queried.
The doctor cut his query short.
"Business is business, no matter how you feel. That curate of yours is
as futile as a Persian pussy in a ten-horse plough. It takes a little
time to pick up the right sort of a new man for a church like this; you
have no right to leave the whole plant at loose ends, while they are
about it, just because your ego has a pain in its psychological
digestion. People have got to go on being married and buried, even if
you can't make a scientific assay of the doctrine of the Atonement.
Well," the doctor rose and emptied out his long-cold pipe; "that's all.
I wish you luck, Brenton, and I'll help you all I can. Whatever I think
about your mental calibre, I do believe that you are honest; and, after
all, that's the main thing we all are trying for. Now go along, and
talk this matter over with your wife. By the way, how is the baby?"
"A little droopy still. It's not too easy to bring him out of it, as
long as I can only give him your stuff on the sly, when Mrs. Brenton is
out of the room." Brenton cast a hasty glance at his watch. "It's time
he had it now. I must be going," he said hurriedly, and, an instant
later, he had bolted from the room.
The doctor listened for the closing of the door. Then his face lost a
little of its keenness, and he sighed.
"It must be the very devil and all to have a conscience," he remarked
at the four walls around him. "Thank God for one thing: I'm immune."
Filling himself a fresh pipe, he sat himself down to its enjoyment.
Half way through it, he spoke once more.
"That woman would beat the Devil in a game of poker, if she could get
the immortal souls of men by way of chips."
But the only immortal soul in Katharine's hands just now was the one
inside her baby boy, a flimsy, fragile little chip upon the tides of
time. However, it would not be Katharine's fault, if time were not soon
exchanged for eternity.
Not that Katharine abused the child, though; not that she exactly
neglected it. She chose its clothing and food with a proper degree of
care; she consulted more than one efficient matron of Saint Peter's
congregation, before she accepted the references of the nurse. That
done, she left the child's routine chiefly to the nurse; to the nurse
exclusively she left all the more tender ministrations to the little,
dawning personality. Upon one point, however, she stood firm. When the
child was ailing, it should be brought at once to her for succour. It
should be healed by the power of her mind, not poisoned by the nostrums
of a man like Doctor Keltridge, good as gold, but slavish in his
adherence to the foolish old traditions.
Therefore it came about that, when the cruel dog days fell upon the
town, when baby after baby became a victim to their scourge until at
last it was the Brenton baby's turn, then Katharine suddenly discovered
that mind was a poor weapon against incipient dysentery. She fought the
disease most valiantly; she even stayed at home for two entire days,
holding the baby in one arm, a fat black volume in the other hand,
reading and pondering by turns. Being human and feminine and, by this
time, a little tired, it is not to be wondered at that occasionally her
mind wandered a little from the child to the best amount of starch for
muslin frocks. Still, as a whole, she held herself fairly steady; and,
by the end of the third day, she was rejoiced to find the child was on
the gain. Openly and aloud, she proceeded to give testimony as
concerned this test case. To Brenton she talked of it incessantly, in
the hope of assisting his conversion to her standards. Unhappily,
Brenton, after talking with Doctor Keltridge, and heavily bribing the
nurse to hold her tongue, knew more about the causes of the cure than
Katharine did, and hence his conversion was not greatly expedited by
it.
It was a good ten days afterward, a good week after his talk with
Doctor Keltridge, that Brenton dropped in at the Keltridges', one
morning, to make his report upon the child. It was the ending of the
office hour; three or four patients still were awaiting their turns for
consultation. Accordingly, Olive, meeting Brenton on the steps, took
him to the library to wait.
"No use your going in there to sit with all the other germs," she told
him lightly, as she removed her hat pins and took off her hat. "Come in
here, and tell me how the boy is getting on. Better, I hope."
"Yes, better. Still, it is slow to get him up again. Babies are such
frail little things; a breath can send them up or down. Of course, I am
very anxious."
Olive took swift note of the singular number of the pronoun; its very
unconsciousness made it the more ominous. It was really that which
framed her answer.
"Yes; but you have a treasure of a nurse. Mrs. Prather tells me that
she is a host in herself."
As Olive spoke, she flattered herself that she had bridged the chasm
successfully. A glance at Brenton, though, assured her that he had been
momentarily aware of the existence of the chasm. Hastily she changed
the subject, too hastily, as it proved, to select her new theme with
care.
"My father has been telling me a little bit about your future plans,
Mr. Brenton."
"My plans?"
She mistook his question utterly.
"No need to worry," she said, with a sudden accent of hauteur. "Of
course, I never should think of speaking of them to any outsider. But
my father has a trick of talking most things over with me; we have been
alone together for so long."
"Of course. There is no reason that you shouldn't know. Besides, it
will be an open secret soon. As soon as things are settled with the
trustees, I shall resign."
"I am very sorry," Olive said quite simply.
His colour came.
"It is the only honourable thing for me to do, Miss Keltridge."
"I know that," she told him, with a swift return to her old
downrightness. "And I am sorry for you, yourself. You must have
suffered, in this whole thing, a great deal more than any of us know."
For an instant, his gray eyes deepened, burned. He started to hold out
his hand to hers; then he checked the gesture.
"I have. It's not an easy thing to do, Miss Keltridge, the sliding out
of a concrete and detailed theology into a something that at best is--"
She cut off his final word.
"I know. Doubting isn't so easy as most people imagine it to be. And
you--It must have been fearful."
"To have had such doubts?" he assented musingly. "Yes--"
Again she cut him off, this time rather unexpectedly. Brenton was
conscious of a momentary wonder whether her sympathy was less than she
had led him to anticipate.
"No; to have had such beliefs, in the first place. If only they had
been a little milder, you never would have distrusted them. It's
nothing but the rasping surface of a creed that sets the doubts to
working."
He tried to conceal a slight sense of hurt beneath his laugh at the
concrete image called into being by her words.
"Like ivy poison, when you rub it, and it spreads? Perhaps." Then
suddenly his eyes went grave. "The curious fact about it all, Miss
Keltridge, is that our beliefs never take half the hold on us that our
doubts do. My inherited notions of original sin and a violent
conversion never by any chance could have upset my worldly advancement.
This last phase of my querying--to phrase it mildly--is going to
overturn my--" And, for the first time in her knowledge of him, Olive
heard his laugh ring bitter; "my whole scheme of domestic economics."
Bitter as was his laugh, though, Brenton's face was only sad. To Olive,
watching him and suddenly grown aware of his weakness, it was plain
that life was taking it out of him rather badly, plain that the man
before her was hungering for comprehension, comfort. What did he get of
that sort, at home?
Once again, at her own question, Olive felt the chasm widening between
them, felt it and instinctively detested it. Still, she could not keep
her mind from lingering an instant on the wonder whether, if Brenton's
wife had been sensitive, unselfish, alert to supply, in so far as lay
within her, the sympathy of which he plainly was in need, the present
crisis ever would have dawned. She doubted. If ever there had been a
case where a wife had muddled things by her total lack of
comprehension, here it was. A blind intolerance would have been nothing
by comparison.
Suddenly she threw back her shoulders and lifted up her head. It was
morally and socially impossible to be heaping all the blame, even of a
mental crisis, on the wife. She, as a woman, owed the other woman more
sufferance than that. And Brenton was disappointingly weak. No strong
man would have fallen down in such a muddle, by reason of a tempest in
his spiritual teapot. Besides, if he had steadied to his strain, he
might perhaps have held his wife also steady, might even have prevented
her allegiance to her new creed. Olive's innate sense of justice
demanded division of the blame.
Yet, as the girl pronounced her judgments on both Brenton and his wife,
she was conscious of an immense wave of pity which spent itself
entirely upon Brenton. Brenton was weak, was futile, disappointing;
nevertheless, it was plain that he was suffering keenly. And, just
because the nature of his suffering was so alien to all her own life's
standards, it impressed itself on Olive as the grim, silent endurance
of Reed Opdyke had never done. Reed was Reed, a solid fact past all
gainsaying; his point of view had become one of the necessities of her
daily life. Always she could predict with just how great a degree of
manliness he would bear himself. As for Brenton--
To her extreme surprise, Olive's mind stopped short, and refused to
continue the comparison.