Dolph, being Dolph, spoke out his fears to Opdyke. Dolph, being a
rhetorician, approached his subject cornerwise, however.
"I wish to heaven you'd fall in love with Olive, Opdyke," he said
moodily, next day.
Reed, looking up from the chaos of letters that were littering his
couch, gave a short laugh.
"So that I could properly present my sympathy to you?" he queried, as a
faint colour stole up across his cheeks.
Dolph dropped his rhetoric, and went bluntly to the point.
"No; so that you could obliterate Brenton's image from her mind."
"What do you mean, Dennison?" Reed spoke sternly.
Dolph threw himself back in his chair and answered at the ceiling.
"I am not sure I mean anything at all. Olive has sense enough for a
dozen, and Brenton is a married man, with a vampire for a wife."
Reed cut in with a question, which showed plainly to Dolph how little
he cared to discuss Dolph's fears concerning Olive.
"Does anybody hear anything from the wife?"
"I don't, thank heaven!" Dolph assured him piously. "I did hear my
sister-in-law explaining to a visitor that Mrs. Brenton was very busy
in Boston. How she knew it; or whether she made it up for
conversational purposes, I don't know. Neither do I know how long it
takes to get one's self into commission as a healer. Doesn't Brenton
ever say anything about her?"
"Not to me. Of course, it's not a subject where I like to be asking
questions; and I suppose, for the same reason, he hates to open it up,
himself."
"Naturally." Dolph's tone was dry. "Reed, who killed that baby?"
Opdyke raised his brows.
"I'm not the medical examiner, Dennison; I'm not obliged to say what I
think about it," he returned.
Dolph sat up and faced his friend.
"I am, then. Opdyke, if it hadn't been a case of his own rector's
family, Doctor Keltridge would have carried the matter to the courts."
"Did Olive tell you?"
"Olive doesn't tell things of that sort," Dolph said conclusively.
"She's her father's own child." Then, of a sudden, he returned to his
original charge. "Opdyke, why don't you think a little more about Olive
Keltridge?" he demanded.
"Because I think quite enough of her, as it is," Reed answered.
"Of her, but not about her," Dolph said moodily. "Of course, if I could
get her for my own wife, I wouldn't be giving you this advice. I've
proved I can't, though--"
Reed interrupted.
"Girls have been known to change their minds," he said.
In spite of his sentimental regrets, Dolph laughed outright.
"If you had been present at our interview, you wouldn't have predicted
any change in this case. Olive was--well, just as she always is, the
soul of downright niceness; but she managed to leave me quite convinced
once and for all that I might as well have wooed the woman in the moon.
And, by Jove," Dolph's voice dropped to a confidential murmur; "now
it's all over, I begin to think that she was right. It was a nasty
half-hour for both of us; but we've come out of it, ripping good
friends and without a sentimental regret to our names."
"Speaks well for Olive."
"Doesn't it? It's left me caring for her a long way more than ever,
only not in the accepted-suitor sort of fashion. That's the reason I
hate to see her drifting about, all at loose ends."
"Dennison," Reed spoke with masterful abruptness; "would you mind doing
a letter or two at my dictation? Duncan is busy in the laboratory, this
afternoon; and these things must go out on to-night's mail." His voice
was steady, as he spoke; but in his brave brown eyes Dolph recognized
the old-time harried, hunted look which he had hoped would never come
again. Later, the letters done, Dolph went away without waiting for
more conversation. For a singularly happy-go-lucky mortal, Dolph's
instincts were to be by no means distrusted.
Dolph's going was only just in time to prevent his meeting Olive who
came around the curve of the street, just as he was leaving the Opdyke
grounds. He waved his hat to her from afar, and she answered his
greeting; but neither of them changed the direction of his steps. They
saw each other often enough, in any case; and it was an accepted fact
between them that Reed's calls were better taken singly, as a rule,
than in pairs.
However, as she went into Reed's room, that day, Olive began to have
her doubts how long the old rule would hold good. Reed was increasingly
busy, nowadays. Letters and drawings, photographs and samples of ores
were piling in upon him from all parts of the country. The old phrase,
indeed, was gaining a new fulfilment: the mountain was coming to
Mahomet in all literalness. Olive had long since become accustomed to
finding the room littered with the débris of much consulting, had grown
accustomed to having her trivial gossip interrupted by the advent of
fresh letters and a new supply of specimen ores. She had grown glib in
reading off the unfamiliar phrasing of the letters, facile in writing
down the totally unspellable words of Opdyke's dictated replies. In all
of this, however, she had been made to feel aware that she herself
stood first to Reed, his work stood second.
Not that Olive for one instant would have allowed herself consciously
to become jealous of Reed's work. She was too sane and generous for
that, too happy in the change it was making in Reed's existence. He was
alert and enthusiastic now, where aforetime he was passive and plucky.
His brown eyes snapped, not gleamed expressively. In short, the new
assistant was finding out, to his extreme surprise, that his position
was no sentimental sinecure, that, coming to be hands and feet to
supplement an active scientific brain, he was likely to work more
strenuously, more to the purpose, than he had done in the New York
office of the brilliant specialist who had sent him up to Reed.
It was several weeks now since Dolph had made his crisp suggestion that
Reed take his profession into bed with him. Even in that little time,
the change was measureless; to all practical intents and purposes, the
dying had come into a new life. The life, too, was by no means wholly
intellectual. As Reed's professional enthusiasm grew stronger, his
bodily gain apparently kept pace with it. To be sure, the lower half of
him was totally, irrevocably dead. Nevertheless, by sheer, energetic
will, Opdyke was making the upper half of his body do duty for the
whole, was gaining a control over his crippled lower limbs that, six
months before, he would have pronounced impossible.
With Ramsdell to pull and pry him to position, nowadays, he sat leaning
up against the pillows on his bed, for an hour or two of every morning.
The effort brought the beads of sweat out upon his forehead; but he
took that a good deal as a matter of course, talked bravely of a
rolling chair and a lift built on the corner of the house and even, a
little later on, of a motor car and of a down-town office. Best of all,
the old haunted look had left his eyes for ever. At least, so Olive had
believed, until that day. To-day, despite his smile of greeting, the
old expression was peering out at her, and she felt her hopes chilling
within her at the sight.
"What is it, Reed?" she asked him, after a few minutes of trivial
conversation. "Something has gone wrong."
"Not with me," he told her quickly. "In fact, things are very right.
Ask Ramsdell."
"But you look--"
"How?" His laugh awaited her final word.
"Worried," she told him flatly. "The way you used to look, last
winter."
"No reason that I should," he reassured her. "Things are going
swimmingly. Now that my new assistant has rallied from the shock of his
surroundings and come to a realizing sense that I prefer technical
journals to tracts, he is proving a grand success. He is going to be of
immense help; and I needed him, now that work is piling in. I'm hoping,
though, your father can plan some way of giving me a little better use
of my arms. There's a loose screw in there that he ought to tighten."
"Reed," Olive spoke thoughtfully; "you are rather unusual."
With some effort, he kept all edge of bitterness out of his voice, as
he replied,--
"I certainly trust so, Olive. It wouldn't be an advantage to humanity
at large to have this a normal state of things. Still, it might be
worse, lots worse. I'm not nearly so soggy as I was. Which reminds me:
do you mind going to the bottom of that heap of letters and taking out
the square gray one. Yes. That's it. Now read it. I've saved it up for
your delight."
There came a silence, broken only by the noise of unfolded paper. Then
Olive looked up.
"Reed! The--"
"Don't swear, Olive," he admonished her, and now his eyes were wholly
mirthful.
"I wasn't going to. I was only hunting for a suitable epithet. How does
she dare?"
"Dare take unto herself the glory of what she calls my incipient cure?
I wish I thought it was that; but vertebrae are vertebrae, in spite of
all the Christian Scientists in all creation. As for her claim, though,
she's got us there, Olive. One can't well prove an alibi, when it's a
case of absent treatment. Still, I must say I like her nerve."
"When did this thing come?" And Olive cast the letter from her, with a
sudden fury which, for the instant, downed her sense of humour utterly.
"Only to-day. I had meant to try a chair, to-morrow; but, in view of
her predictions, I'll be hanged if I will. She would go to cackling
forth that it was all her doing. How do you suppose she knew anything
about me, anyway?"
"Spies, probably. Those people will stoop to anything to carry on their
cause," Olive said tartly.
"Then one ought to feel a sneaking admiration for their _esprit du
corps_, at least. In fact, if you translate the phrase literally
enough, it holds the very nubbin of their whole belief. But I hope you
noted the clause concerning Brenton. I am glad she even feels so much
of interest in him."
Olive settled back in her chair, and yielded up her creed of married
life briefly, trenchantly.
"Reed, if I owned a husband, I'd focus my mind upon his breakfasts and
his buttonholes and his entertainment of an evening. That's what men
want, not hifalutin' mind cures delivered at long range." Then she
repented. "Still, I'm not fair to Mrs. Brenton, Reed. She doesn't
interest me in the least."
"Does Brenton?" Reed asked. And then he shut his teeth, as he waited
for the reply.
The reply, when it came, was direct.
"Yes, Reed; he does, intensely. He is a mass of brilliant possibilities
that all are going wrong. Moreover, I can't help a feeling I could help
him, if I would. I know that sometimes I have seen farther inside his
mind than even he knows, and it has given me an odd feeling of
responsibility over him, a responsibility that I can't see just how to
carry out." Suddenly she paused. "Reed," she said; "you're not as well,
to-day. What is the trouble? Are you overdoing; or has Ramsdell let you
strain yourself?"
He forced a smile back to his lips, although his eyes were haggard.
"It's nothing, Olive, really." He spoke as lightly as he could. "Your
imaginings concerning Brenton have lapped over on to me; that's all."
She felt the rebuke in his words, knew within herself how undeserved it
was, and, rather than confess the truth, arose in her own defence.
"Not imaginings, Reed," she said, and her self-protective dignity yet
hurt him. "Now and then we women do have intuitions that are
trustworthy. This, I think, is one of them. And Mr. Brenton needs all
the help he can get, out of any sort of source."
Reed shut his teeth upon his hurt, until he could command his voice
once more. Then,--
"I agree with you there, Olive," he assented. "Moreover, I wrote to
Whittenden about him, a week ago. If any one can be of use, it will be
Whittenden; he always knows what tonic it is best to prescribe. Must
you go?" He looked up at her appealingly. Then the same appeal came
into his voice, set it to throbbing with an accent wholly new to
Olive's ears. "Olive," he said; "you're not going to misunderstand me,
not going to allow Brenton to come in between us?"
Suddenly the girl went white; suddenly she bent down to rest her hand
on his, in one of the few, few touches she had ever given his fingers
since the day he had been brought home and laid there in his room,
powerless to withdraw himself from too insistent human contacts. Her
voice, when she spoke, had a throb that matched his own.
"Never, Reed!" she said.
A moment later, she was gone, leaving Opdyke there alone, to wonder
and, wondering, to worry.
Two afternoons later, Duncan, the new assistant, brought up a message
from the laboratory. Brenton would be at leisure, soon after four.
Might he come up? That was just after luncheon. Therefore two hours
would intervene, two hours for a quiet going over of certain things
that Reed Opdyke felt it was for him alone to say, certain measures for
Olive's safety which he alone should take. Indeed, there was no other
man who stood, to Olive's mind, so nearly in a brother's place; no
other man, it seemed to Opdyke, who owned one half so good a right to
test the ground on which she stood, to assure himself that she might
venture forward safely.
Opdyke was no sentimentalist. Nevertheless, he recognized all that it
might portend when such a girl as Olive Keltridge, the soul of sanity
and downrightness, talked about her comprehension of a man like
Brenton. Moreover, Opdyke was no gossip. Nevertheless, he had not
failed to hear a certain amount of speculation as to the possibilities
of Brenton's seeking a divorce. Sought, there was no question of his
getting it. Katharine's desertion was an established fact past all
gainsaying.
And, if he sought it and won it, what then? Merely the helping him
become as well worth while, as well worth Olive's while, as it was
possible for any man to be. This was the task which Reed had set
himself; the task for which he was bracing himself, during those two
endless hours; the task for the accomplishment of which he was
resolved, if need be, to tear away the coverings which, up to now, he
had held fast above certain of the reticences of his own life. The
tearing would be sure to hurt; but what of that? Olive, given the
opportunity, would have done as much for him.
The afternoon lengthened interminably, and the clock was striking the
half-hour, when Brenton finally came up the stairs. His face was grave,
as he greeted his old friend, his eyes a little overcast and heavy.
Reed jerked his head in the direction of a chair.
"Sit down," he said hospitably; "and then fill up your pipe. Duncan
doesn't smoke, worse luck; and I find I miss the old aroma. It's rather
like incense offered to the ghost of my old self."
His accent was trivial, and Brenton, listening to the apparently
careless words, could form no notion of the pains that had gone into
their choosing.
"Your new self, I should say. It's astounding, Opdyke, the way you've
picked yourself out of the rut and gone rushing ahead again."
"With a difference, though," Reed told him bluntly. "Is the jar full?
You like the kind?"
"Yes, thanks." And Brenton filled his pipe. After a minute's puffing,
"After all, Opdyke, you have pretty well minimized the difference," he
observed.
"Thanks to Ramsdell and Duncan, yes. They have been wonderful props,
and it's good to get on my professional legs again, whatever my bodily
ones may do for me. Meanwhile, how are things going with you?"