For a little while, the professor smoked in silence.

"Can't you warn him unofficially, Keltridge?" he asked then.

"That he is disgracing the department?"

"No. That he is wrecking his final chance to amount to anything that's practical? That, if he holds on here, he must keep within some sort of limits in the things he says? That, if he lets go this present opportunity, he'll turn into the worst of all things, a mental derelict?"

The doctor groaned at the suggestion.

"Opdyke, I'll be hanged if I'll put in all my time, playing intellectual wet-nurse to Scott Brenton! I've served my turn. If ever he began to cut his wisdom teeth, it's time he was about it."

The professor took up the metaphor and cast it back upon the doctor.

"A good many babies die of teething," he said. "I've heard you say, yourself, that it was the one time in all a man's life when he was most dependent on the ministrations of the doctor."

The doctor rose and straightened up his shoulders.

"Fairly caught," he confessed. "Well, I'll do my best. Meanwhile, how is Reed?"

"Too busy to think much about himself."

"Not overworking?" the doctor questioned sharply.

"No. At least, not if his mental condition is any index to his physical. He is eager as a boy over the way his work is coming in. Did I tell you he has an assistant coming, day after to-morrow? Poor little Dennison has been swamped, for two weeks, in the rising tide of things that he knew nothing at all about. I must say he's been heroic in his efforts to help Reed out."

The doctor nodded.

"Dolph is a good sort. In the last analysis, he is not unlike Reed; they have the same staying power, the same trick of hating to take themselves in earnest. Still, for Reed's sake as well as Dolph's, I'm glad a trained assistant is coming. In fact, I might say I am glad on my own account."

"You?"

The doctor laughed.

"Yes. I've had Dolph at all hours, tearing his hair in my laboratory, while I tried to coach him. I do think, for a boy brought up on belles-lettres, he's made a decent showing as assistant mineralogist. I like Dolph. He's an all-round good fellow."

The professor laid aside his pipe; then he looked up keenly.

"He's at your house often?" he inquired.

The doctor read his old friend like a large-print page. Reading, he straightway became impenetrable.

"Yes. He drops in rather often," he assented. "Of course, he knows I am a good deal interested in Reed's new venture. Wonderful, isn't it, the way it has turned out so well? If only Brenton had one quarter of his steady grip!"

But, for the present, steady grip was the one thing Brenton lacked. Indeed, watching the recent chaos of his domestic life, one could scarcely wonder. As the doctor had said, reaction was bound to come. It had been no small upsetting, too, the saying farewell to his association with Saint Peter's Parish. The sudden reversal of his collar buttons was, in a sense, typical of the sudden reversal of all his habits of thought and life. His grip had been loosening, during many previous months; the sudden change in his responsibilities appeared to have relaxed it utterly.

In the broadest sense, Brenton's old work, like his new, had been teaching. Now, however, the enthusiasm of his gospel was possessing him completely, a gospel, nowadays, solely of the science which, heretofore, threading through and through the fabric of his sermons, had of necessity been juggled to the likeness of the Book of Revelation. Now that he could set it forth in all its nakedness, it seemed to Brenton more than ever like the Book of Revelation. Day after day, his enthusiasm for his theme increased its pace, threw off the bridle of hard, concrete fact, ran to the speculative limits of its course, and then ran past them. By the first of May, Brenton's lectures had made themselves one of the features of the college world; but, by the same token, they had ceased to be lectures upon chemistry, and had become harangues upon every phase of the allied sciences, harangues which ran through the entire gamut of abstract investigation, and came to rest at last upon the pair of finite questions: Whence? and Whither?

And, by the first of May, the student world was all agog, seeking to answer those questions flatly and quite off-hand, instead of waiting for experience of life to give the answer for them. Brenton, meantime, was becoming ten times the force he had been at Saint Peter's; the only trouble lay in the fact that now his force was, not formative, but deformative.

"He's making himself a reputation, fast enough," Dolph Dennison said, one day. "How much good he is accomplishing, though, is another question."

To Dolph's surprise, Olive opposed him.

"Isn't there always good in simple, downright sincerity?" she queried.

"Not a bit of it," Dolph assured her bluntly, for a certain talk between them, weeks before, a talk disastrous to the best of Dolph's plans for life, had in no sense put an end to their good friendship. "Sincerity itself is nothing. It's the thing one gets sincere about." Then, without waiting for an answer, "What a woman you are, Olive!" he said.

"Because I stand up for Mr. Brenton?"

"Because, down in your secret heart, you rather admire him for his confounded weaknesses." Dolph spoke with increasing bluntness.

"Not for his weaknesses, Dolph. The man is plucky and sincere. For the sake of the things that he believes are true, he will give up, has given up, more than most of us will ever gain."

Dolph plunged his fists into his pockets.

"Hang it all, Olive! Do be concrete," he bade her.

"I will, if I can," she said fearlessly. "It's only that the things themselves aren't too concrete."

"No." Dolph spoke incisively. "I should say they aren't. Olive look here. Don't get your values muddled, at this stage of the game."

Despite their friendship, she looked up at him haughtily.

"What do you mean, Dolph?"

For a minute, he stared down at her, smiling slightly and with a look in his eyes that nullified the frank brutality of his next words.

"Don't get mawkish over Brenton, Olive, just because he is a pitiful weakling who, in spite of all his good intentions, has made a consistent mess of everything he's tried to do. Because a man is weak, he isn't necessarily more lovable. Because he has an incurable disease, he isn't, of necessity, any more a subject for idolatry. No; I don't mean that to lap over on to Opdyke, either. If ever a man was healthy, Opdyke is that man. But Brenton isn't. His logic and his conscience both are full of bacteria, bad little bacteria that swim around and mess things. He may pull out of it, of course, and make something in the end. Then, you can set him up on a pedestal and stick flowers in his fair hair. For the present, though, do keep sane about him, and deplore him, not admire."

"Aren't you a little hard on him, Dolph?" Olive asked steadily, although her cheeks were burning with the truth of his implied accusal.

"No; I'm not."

There came a short pause. Then,—

"I am very sorry for him," Olive said a little obstinately.

"Be sorry, then. Be just as sorry as you can. But, for heaven's sake, don't tell him so," Dolph retorted rather mercilessly. "If he's ever going to amount to anything, he must be brought up with a round turn, not coddled and treated as a victim of untoward circumstance. If he behaves like this over a growing pain in his theology, what do you suppose he'd do in Opdyke's place?"

Olive struggled to regain her hauteur.

"The cases aren't parallel, Dolph," she said. "One is a physical matter; the other concerns the spirit."

Once again Dolph paused and looked down at her intently. Then,—

"Which is which?" he queried. "No; don't get testy, Olive. I'm not producing any brief for Opdyke. In fact, he doesn't need one; we both of us know already what he stands for. But I do hate to see a girl like you go off her head about such a man as Brenton, a man with a Christian Science wife and a thrilling voice and speaking eyes: all deadly assets for a misunderstood ex-preacher. No; I do not like Brenton. He's not my sort. Neither, for the fact of it, is he your sort."

Olive compressed her lips.

"I may help to make him so," she said.

"Best let him make himself; he's had too many formative fingers in his pie, already. Besides," Dolph's lips curled into an irrepressible smile; "how do you know it would be for his advantage?"

For one instant, Olive struggled with her pique. Then she cast it off, and looked up at Dolph with her old smile.

"You hit hard, Dolph," she told him; "but I'm not sure you aren't in the right of it, after all. I like Mr. Brenton. I am sorry for him; perhaps it has muddled my values, as you call it, to be on the inside circle of his advisers. Still, there is something to be said upon the other side. You can't comprehend a man like Mr. Brenton, if you try."

"Why not? Not that I've tried over much, though," Dolph added, in hasty confession.

"It wouldn't have done you any good, if you had tried," Olive assured him flatly. "You haven't a single point in common. By ancestry and training, you're as unlike as a Zulu and an Eskimo. You began at about the point where Mr. Brenton, if he's lucky, will leave off. Your great-great-grandparents settled once for all the questions that he's agonizing over now. Naturally, you don't remember their struggles, and so you can't see why his should take it out of him, any more than you can see why a personable man like him ever could have married—"

"What your father aptly terms the She-Gargoyle?" Dolph inquired. "No; I can't. But then the question arises promptly, how can you?"

Olive smiled a little sadly. Loath though she was to acknowledge it to Dolph, of late she had been finding out that comprehension does not always make for full approval.

"As you say, Dolph," she told him; "it's the woman of me. After our own fashion, we every one of us are natural nurses; we know when our menfolk are in pain."

"Not always, Olive." Dolph spoke sadly.

"Yes, Dolph, we do. Hard as it is, though, sometimes we have to admit we have no cure for that especial pain. Still, you can be quite sure that it isn't easy for us to turn away and leave it, unhealed and aching." Then she threw off the little allegory, and once more spoke with spirit. "Dolph, we're created in mental couples, I suspect. Much as I care for Reed, it was you who had the insight to plan how he could make his life over into something besides the bare existence we all were dreading. In the same way, I may be the one to take in the tragedy of Mr. Brenton's indeterminate existence, and make it just a little lighter, if only by my understanding. Anyway, I mean to try."

She turned in across the lawn, leaving Dolph to stare after her retreating figure with no small anxiety.

"Blast the understanding!" he said profanely. "And then, blast the preacher!"

The poor preacher, however, for preacher still he was, in spite of the reversal of his collar fastenings, was feeling himself already blasted. He had been spending a long hour in the doctor's laboratory; and the doctor, for the once, had turned his back upon his pans and trays of cultures, and lavished his entire attention on his visitor.

"It's just here, Brenton," he said quietly, after an hour of argument; "you can do one of two things: you can keep to your text and teach those girls straight chemistry; or—"

Brenton faced him squarely, squarely capped the sentence with a single word.

"Resign."

"Yes."

"You mean you think I am a failure in my teaching?"

"No. Your teaching is all right. You are a born chemist and a born teacher. It's your infernal preaching I object to," the doctor told him unexpectedly.

"My preaching?"

"Yes. You employ your pulpit methods in your classes. You take a chemical text, and then turn and twist it into any sort of a metaphysical conclusion that appeals to you at the minute. No; wait! I am talking. Science is not equivocal, Brenton. It's as downright and determinate as A+B. It's what we know; not what we think we ought to think about the things we know. And it's science you are there to teach, not glittering abstractions having to do with man's latter end. The fact is, you've spent so long in trying to subject your theology to scientific proof that, now you're surfeited with science, you are trying to use it as a feeder to your theologic fires."

"Not consciously," Brenton objected, as a flush crept up across his cheeks. "I have meant—"

The doctor interrupted, but not unkindly.

"Consciously or unconsciously, it's all one, Brenton, as concerns the output. You must bridle your scientific imagination and your tongue, or else you'll have the whole college by the ears. For the present, you are letting off harmless rockets. Before you know it, though, you'll be dynamiting the whole establishment. Best go slow."

Brenton attempted one last stand.

"Have I any right to go slow, doctor, when there's a principle involved? Have I any right to suppress eternal truths—"

Then the doctor lost his temper.

"Eternal pollywogs!" he burst out. "Man, you're daft. Who told you what truths are eternal? Who told you where science ends, and where theology begins? Who told you what we mean, when we say provable? For two thousand years, and then some more, we have been slowly sifting down a whole mass of ill-assorted beliefs into two great facts: Creator and created. For practical purposes, isn't that all we need to know? Isn't it all that we any of us can grasp: the surety that the Creative Mind would never have taken the trouble to fashion us, in the first place if he hadn't put inside us all the needful germs of progress, all the needful intellect to grasp the evident duty that lies just ahead? What else, then, do you need? No. Don't try to talk about it. Just go out and take a good, long walk in the fresh air, and forget your latter end in the more important concerns of deep breathing. You are getting disgustingly round-shouldered. Good bye. And, by the way, I'll tell Olive you will be back here to dinner."

But Brenton, going on his way, was totally oblivious to the doctor's sage counsel as to the merits of deep breathing. Neither did he realize in the least the splendid optimism of the stern old doctor's creed. For the hour, optimism was quite beyond his ken. He only realized that his own world had gone bad; that failure awaited him at every turn, not a downright and practical failure, either, but a nebulous and indeterminate futility. His life had been nothing but one restless struggle to arrive at something finite, something which should satisfy alike his heart and reason. Instead of gaining the one thing, it seemed to him that all had been lost. His present existence was as focusless as an eye after its lens has been extracted. His past had been opaque, his future would be permanently blurred. And for what good had been all the pain? It would have been far better, far more sane, if he had clung stoutly to the flaming horns of his hereditary Calvinism. Infinitely better to feel their scorching touch than to drift into a state of apathy past any feeling! And Brenton wondered vaguely whether he ever would feel anything again, anything, that is, as a personal issue, rather than as a scrap of the great world-plan. Most things, nowadays, left him conscious of being aloof, remote. Even the going away of his wife. Even the death of—He pulled himself up short. Not the baby's death. That was still personal, still very personal; personal was the message of those little waving hands. What did the baby see? Something denied for ever to his adult and doubting eyes?

Forgetful of the doctor's invitation to come back to dine, Brenton at twilight found himself upon the long white bridge, his elbows on the rail, his eyes upon the darkening surface of the river, as it swept down upon him from out the purpling hills. As of old, its mystery held him, the mystery of its ceaseless coming, the mystery of its ceaseless going on and on, until it lost all individual existence in the soundless, boundless sea. To-night, in the apathy which held his senses in subjection, he watched it through the dying twilight, until it ceased to be to him a river, but appeared to him as an embodiment of life itself, coming, coming, coming down to him out of the purpling distance, going, going, going down away from him into the deepening shadows. And then the light died, and darkness crept across it all, and then—extinction.

Next morning, he arranged it with Professor Opdyke that, for the present, the other assistant should take over all of his lectures, while he himself would put in his time inside the laboratory.



CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

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 debris 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?"

Brenton smoked in silence for a minute. Then,—

"The wraith of my departed priestly calling forbids me to phrase my answer just as I'd like best to do," he said.

Reed nodded.

"So bad as that? What is the matter now?"

"It's hard to specify. I seem to have run myself aground."

"Pull off, then," Reed advised.

"No craft in sight to tow me."

Reed shut his teeth.

"Brenton, that has been your trouble from the start. You've always been drifting, anchor up, ready for a tow. Now hoist your sails and, for the Lord's sake, go ahead."

"Where?"

"Where! Wherever the chart takes you. What chart? The chart of plain duty, man, the duty of an honest citizen to make the most of himself and be a little good to humanity at large. No; wait. You've had your chances; you can't cry off on that. You had your chance, 'way back in college, and you chucked it over. How much more would it have hurt your mother to have seen you once for all take up a secular profession, than it would to have watched you setting out to preach all the things her own religion didn't stand for? You had another chance in Saint Peter's. It wasn't a small chance, either. You could have held that church together, solid; you could have brought its people to a working assent to a practical exposition of their creed that would have kept them busy and loyal to their Creator, in doing their duty to their co-created fellow men. Instead, you ignored your chance to keep them busy on things that would help on the world we live in, and spent all your energies in tangling up your notions of the world we came out of, and the world we, some day, are going into. As mental gymnastics, it was very pretty to watch; as a useful employment for a man who calls himself a pastor of souls, it wasn't worth a rush."

"But a man can't help his thoughts," Brenton expostulated suddenly.

"Can't he?" Reed whitened. "Brenton," he asked gravely; "don't you suppose that there have been times on times, since they lugged me up these stairs, that, if I had let myself go, I wouldn't have turned my face to the wall and cursed, not only the whole plan of creation, but the Creator himself? Times on times that, if I hadn't held tight to a few rudimentary notions that I took in with my mother's milk, notions about the decent and square thing to do for the God that made you, I wouldn't have tested the logic of your doubtings with a dose of cyanide? I tell you a man can help his thoughts. I tell you a man can hold to his beliefs. He can wonder about the petty things as much as he chooses, and it never does him one bit of harm. But the final great belief of all, that there is a wise Creator back of things, and that we owe Him at least as much loyal courtesy as we give to the best of our brother men: that is something it is in the hands of any man to hold on to, if he chooses. Brenton, I hate to lecture you," and, with a sudden gesture brimful of appealing for forgiveness, for loyal comprehension, Reed stretched out his hand; "but you have got to bring yourself up with a round turn. In some way or other, you have missed your chances. You have gone rushing off for shiny butterflies, when you ought to have stopped at home and milked the cows. Something," he smiled; "Whittenden says it was my downfall, set you to asking questions that you were too nearsighted to answer. Instead of sticking to a few fundamental bits of faith, you made yourself a ladder out of theological catchwords, clambered up it and kicked out all the rungs, one after another, as you climbed. Then you turned dizzy, and lost your grip, and fell all in a heap. Brenton, we've had about the same experience, one way or another, out of life."

"But you have braced up again and gone ahead," Brenton said slowly.

"So will you, man. That's why I am harrying you now, to start you up again. We neither one of us are half through our allotted term of years. In simple decency, we've got to play out the game."

"If we can," Brenton interrupted.

"No if about it. We've got it to do. Of course, we can't do it in quite the same old way. Be plucky as we can, it's impossible for us to deny that we've been scarred—badly; that the scars, some of them, can never really heal. Still, as long as we've a year ahead of us and a drop of fighting blood inside us—Brenton, it isn't easy; but it's our one way to prove we're game."

Then, for a while, the room was very still. At last, Reed spoke once more.

"Scott," he said slowly, and the old name held a note of great love; "once on a time, you didn't resent it when I told you that old Mansfield asked me to take you in hand and show you a few things out of my own experience. Don't resent it now. We've been too good friends for too many years for that."

Ramsdell's steady step came up the stairs, and Reed went on quite simply.

"Then you've heard from Whittenden?"

Brenton, pulling himself back to the present, looked up sharply at the question.

"How did you know?"

"He wrote me. What does he suggest?"

"Didn't he tell you that? He wants me to go down to him, and take over some of his settlement work."

"Shall you go?"

Brenton shook his head.

"It's out of the question, Opdyke. I only wish I could, for I am not of much use to your father, I'm afraid. Still, hereafter—Well, perhaps you've put new force into me by your admonitions." But his voice broke a little over the intentionally careless words.

Opdyke ignored the allusion.

"Then why not go to Whittenden?" he inquired, as carelessly as he was able.

Brenton arose and stood, erect, looking down at his old friend intently, as if anxious that Opdyke should lose no fragment of his meaning.

"Because, now more than ever," he said, a little bit insistently; "I feel it would be impossible for me to go away from the college. To change now would be a confession of another failure. If I am to make good at all, it must be here and soon. Besides," and now his accent changed; "I must stay on here and keep my house open, Opdyke. The time may come, when Mrs. Brenton wishes to come back to me. If it does come, she must find everything ready, waiting for her to make her realize that, at last, she is once more at home."

And then, as Ramsdell came inside the room, he turned and went away down the stairs. Watching him, Reed Opdyke could not but feel reassured on his account. Whatever his anxieties for himself and Olive, he could not fail to realize that, unknown to any of them, looking on, the steadying processes in Brenton had begun.



CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

All the world admitted that the summer was a trying one, that year. All the world, with half a dozen exceptions, turned migratory, in the hope of finding better weather farther on. The exceptions included the Opdykes who stayed at home on Reed's account; the Keltridges who remained in mercy to those of the doctor's patients who were too poor to pay the price of a railway ticket to the seashore, even for a day; and Brenton who never, since his wife had left him, had slept a night away from home. That Katharine would one day come back to him, Brenton was so firmly convinced that he saw no need of insisting on his belief to other people. It was his one steadfast ambition to keep the home always ready to welcome her back; always to keep it as nearly as possible as she had left it, so that her home coming might accomplish itself without the slightest jar.

In a sense, despite the chasm which had opened out between them, a chasm, as he now admitted frankly to himself, in part of his own making, despite even the ugly facts surrounding the baby's death, Brenton still loved Katharine. Moreover, he still had hours of being desperately lonely. Back of it all, though, was his strict adherence to the letter of his marriage bond. Whatever came between them, Katharine was still his wife; his home was always hers. Whatever other duties lay ahead of him, one was constant: to hold himself true to this avowed allegiance, to win her back from what seemed to him a passing madness; or else, that failing, to take her as she was and forget everything else besides the one great fact of her wifehood, of her recent motherhood of their dead baby boy. If he held firm to that, and to some other things, the future might yet offer untold good to them. Meanwhile, he would be ready for any event that came.

The other things to which Brenton, all that summer, was holding firmly, had come out of his association with Reed Opdyke. Opdyke, in all terseness, had summed up man's whole duty: to play out the game uprightly, and, out of loyalty to an all-wise Creator, not to lose touch with the present chance in trying to see too many moves ahead. The remoter parts of life, so long as they remained remote, would take care of themselves. And, in the same way, the problems of the after-life, its meanings, could be left unsolved, if not unstudied, until the time came when one could take them in a nearer view. Properly lived, life was too busy to admit of many questions, anyway. Always there were so many useful things to be done that scanty time remained for over much philosophizing. And, as for the man knocked down and out, whether by spiritual doubting, or black powder, it was for him to choose whether he would lie on his back and wallow limply in the dust of his emotions, or stiffen himself, ready for new effort.

All through the blazing heat of the worst June ever recorded; all through the chill of a cold, wet July, Opdyke preached his doctrine with insistence, preached it in season and out. While he preached, he practised; often, it must be confessed, a good deal to his own detriment. The lift and the rolling chair and the down-town office were still in a future which every one, including Reed himself, knew to be increasingly nebulous. However, he and Duncan were building up no small amount of reputation in their work; and, while the loosened screw of which Opdyke had complained to Olive was throwing all the manual toil on Duncan, it was an open secret that Opdyke supplied the brains.

However, no amount of professional contentment can quite atone for the strain of many sleepless nights; and, more than once that summer, Doctor Keltridge had been strongly tempted to call a halt in the whole undertaking. Then, at the last minute, he had stayed his prohibition. Opdyke, in all surety, was working far beyond his strength. None the less, it seemed to the old doctor that there would be a certain cruelty in bringing to a sudden halt this sole activity permitted to him, this sole means of contact with his old profession. The doctor spent his summer between the horns of a dilemma: his disapproval of Reed's overworking, his greater disapproval of the need for thrusting Reed back into his former impotence. And, to all seeming, there was no middle ground. It would have taxed the strength even of a full-bodied man to have held together a reputation, under such handicaps as those beneath which Reed was working. The doctor grumbled in his throat at Ramsdell; but he spoke out no word to Reed. For the present, he was well aware, he had power to dominate the situation.

And so the cold, wet July rolled along; and then came an August, drearier, more chilly. The sweet New England summer was drowned in a cold, raw fog which only broke at intervals into a day of blazing sunshine which set all the world a-steam. It was a hideous season, even for the prosperous vagrants of society. To Reed, imprisoned in his room and in a town empty of all his friends but two or three, it was well-nigh insupportable. Brenton dropped in upon him, half a dozen times a week, and Olive never missed a day, while Duncan was invaluable. Nevertheless, it was plain that the summer was wearing on the "puffic' fibbous," although his old-time beauty was bidding fair to outlast the malign attacks of fortune. Indeed, to Olive Keltridge, it seemed that Opdyke never had been one half so good to look upon as now, never one half so virile.

"Most men would be impossible in such a situation," she said to her father, one morning in early August. "You would be a caricature, and, as for a man like Mr. Brenton—"

"Hush! Speak of angels!" her father warned her. Then, in another tone, he added, "Morning, Brenton. You're up early; aren't you?"

But Brenton's face refused to light in answer to the doctor's greeting.

"I've had a telegram from Boston," he said, and his accent was dull, monotonous. "Katharine is very ill, pneumonia."

"They have sent for you?"

"Yes. And to hurry."

Olive spoke impetuously.

"I am so sorry. But it may be better than you think."

He looked across at her, as if he had not been aware of her presence until she spoke.

"Good morning, Miss Keltridge," he said hastily. "Yes, it may be. In pneumonia there's always some hope, till the very last, I imagine. That is the reason," he turned back to the doctor; "the reason I've come to you. Can you go to Boston with me?"

The doctor swiftly conned his list of cases.

"This noon? Ye—es. But, Brenton," his keen old eyes were infinitely kind; "you know it is by no means sure that Mrs. Brenton will let me see her."

"I think she will," Brenton said quietly. "She has never been in a place like this—" there came a sudden wave of recollection which made him glance furtively across at the doctor, then add, "exactly. Besides, Catie was always very fond of you."

And Olive, hearing, comprehended once again and, comprehending, gave to Brenton a new sort of loyalty which she had heretofore denied him. She knew that, in that old-time nickname, coming unbidden to the husband's lips, there was the proof that all memory of Katharine's disaffection had been wiped out from Brenton's mind, for evermore.

It was early, the next morning, when Olive carried the final bulletins to Reed. Her father had just called her up upon the telephone to tell her that the end had come. Up to the last of her consciousness, Katharine had refused to see him; only the healer and Brenton had been allowed inside the room. Then, when she had sunk into the fitful stupor which could have only the one ending, Brenton had come to summon him; and they had stood together, hand on hand, while the life before them ebbed away. It had been a peaceful passing. Just at the very end had come a moment of full consciousness, when she had turned to smile up at her husband.

"Scott," she said to him; "I'm sorry. But, in the next world, I think perhaps you'll understand me just a little better."

And then the earth-light had faded from her eyes and, in its place, there had dawned the dazzling recognition of the things that are to be.

Reed listened to it all, in perfect silence. When Olive had finished,—

"Poor old Brenton!" he said slowly. "It was a conjugal I-told-you-so, coming back to him as a message out of the misty borderland he's tried so hard to penetrate."

Later, that same day, Olive dropped in on Reed again. She was lonely, she claimed, without her father, restless and nervous from thinking much about the Brentons, wondering what Brenton himself would do. And Reed, who had grown eager at her coming, felt his eagerness departing while he listened to her second reason. Even his courage recognized the fact that there were limits to his strength. It seemed to him quite intolerable that he must lie there and smile, and assent politely to the divagations of Olive concerning Brenton's future plans. Besides, loyal as he was to Olive, Reed was conscious of a little disappointment that a girl, even as uncompromisingly downright as she, should be quite so prompt in expressing interest in Brenton's future.

But Olive, noticing his reticence, laid it only to the exhaustion of a hideously rainy day, and talked on steadily. What Reed did not know till later was that her steady monologue was designed to cover up her real intention for just a little while, that she might gain time to stiffen to the resolution she had taken. The resolution had been growing up in her for weeks; it had come to its climax, only that very morning, when she had met Ramsdell on the Opdyke steps.

"How is Mr. Opdyke?" she had queried.

Then she had caught her breath at Ramsdell's answer.

"Rather poorly, Miss Keltridge."

She cast a hasty glance upward, to assure herself that Reed's windows were not open.

"What do you mean?" she demanded sharply then.

Ramsdell looked down upon her gloomily.

"That I'm uneasy, Miss Keltridge. There's no one thing the matter, and yet Mr. Hopdyke does seem to be losing ground. It's 'is ambition runs away with all 'is strength. As long as he kept still on his back, 'e gained. But now 'e seems to be trying to get hout of bed and leave his back be'ind 'im, as that 'ealing woman told him; and, like all of us, he isn't meant to cast off his own spinal column, bad as 'tis. His work won't 'urt 'im, if he takes it quiet; but, as a nurse trained in the Royal 'Ospital, I must hinsist it is bad for any man to try to do Delsarte gymnastics on a hempty stomach of a morning."

Despite her consternation, Olive laughed.

"Can't you make him stop it, Ramsdell?"

"Impossible, Miss Keltridge. When it comes to that I'm nothing but another man. What Mr. Hopdyke needs now is a woman to manage 'im and cocker 'im up a bit. In spite of all his work and that, he's away off on 'is nerve."

"How does he show it, Ramsdell?" Olive asked, a little faintly, for there was that in the whites of the great black eyes which made her painfully aware that Ramsdell was not talking quite at random, and she disliked to feel that even those dog-like eyes, devoted though they were to Reed, had penetrated the secret of her woman's nature.

Ramsdell's reply refreshed her by its very lack of sentiment.

"When 'e's feeling fit, Miss Keltridge, 'e swears something glorious. Nowadays, it's as much as he can do to trump up henergy to let off a single damn. There! He's calling!" And Ramsdell vanished in the direction of the stairs.

Left to herself, Olive tramped home as if the seven-league boots had been upon her feet. Once at home, for some reason only known to womankind, she elected to sweep and dust the library with her own hands, and then to scour the brasses of the fireplace. Half through the second operation, though, she hesitated, paused, stopped short and threw aside her cloth and pinafore. Leaving them for the maids to discover and gather up at will, she went to her room, arrayed herself immaculately and quite regardless of the weather, and once more sallied out in search of Reed. While she was going up the Opdyke stairs, however, she suddenly became aware that she had nothing to say to him which would account for her suddenly renewed desire for his society. Accordingly, she talked of Brenton till Reed's soul was weary. Then, with a sudden flounce, she brought the talk around to Reed himself.

"How many mines have you added to your list, to-day?" she asked him.

Reed heaved a short sigh of relief, not out of egotism, but merely to be freed from further talk concerning Brenton.

"Only one."

"That's unusual. Still, I am rather glad it happens so. Ramsdell is convinced that you are working too hard, in this impossible weather."

"Ramsdell is a chronic grumbler," Reed said disloyally. "I'm all right, Olive."

She bent forward, her elbows on her knees, and stared down at him intently.

"I'm not too sure of that, Reed. You are growing thin, and you look tired. No wonder, from what Mr. Duncan has told us. Is it quite worth while, though?"

"It is."

"But why?" she urged, with sudden recklessness of any pain her insistence might be causing him.

He reddened.

"Let's leave the dead past out of it, Olive. What's the use of going over the old ground again? You know my one ambition is to make whatever is left of my life a gift worth while."

"Gift?" she queried steadily. "To whom, Reed?"

"Its Creator, when the time comes," he answered, with the slow difficulty with which a strong man always touches such a theme. "Who else?"

His sudden question, answering as it did to her own thoughts, astounded her. Her face flushed, lighted, filled itself with a dazzling radiance which, for the moment, Reed was powerless to interpret. For just that single moment, Olive caught in her breath and held it. Then,—

"Why, to me," she answered simply. "Reed dear, you have made it wonderfully well worth the asking. May I have it for my very own?"

Fifteen minutes later on, Ramsdell came up the stairs. When he had gone down them stealthily and tiptoed through the lower hall, he wiped his eyes, then blew his nose in raucous triumph.

"The one thing I 'ave halways 'oped would 'appen!" he said impressively.

Four days afterward, Brenton came home again, came straight from the burial service on the country hillside to take up his old life in the wifeless home. As a matter of course, his first evening he spent with Opdyke.

Opdyke, looking for change in him, was not disappointed. Change was evident, and of a sort for which Opdyke had scarcely dared to hope. Of sadness there was curiously little sign; the black band on his sleeve was the only outward show of mourning, and Brenton's face explained the lack. Even in the few days of his new experience, the old indecision seemed to have left his face for ever, and with it much of the old sadness. He carried himself more alertly, too, as if, for the future, life were too full of purpose to permit of any indecision or delay.

Of his trouble, he said singularly little.

"Poor Catie! She died, loyal to me, and happy in her belief," he told Reed briefly. "It was the end she would have chosen for herself. Next time we meet each other, though, we shall understand each other better and have better patience." And that was all he said, then or afterwards. Instead, he congratulated Reed upon his new, great happiness.

After a time,—

"Now, shall you go to Whittenden?" Opdyke asked him.

Brenton shook his head.

"No. My place is here. So far, I have never worked out much good from any of the chances I've had given me. I'd better do it, here and now, without wasting time by any further change. As for the quality of the work, Opdyke, I've been thinking things, the past few days. There are men in plenty doing their level best to work out God's existence in the lives of his created children. For me, I think it's better worth the while to try to prove that universal laws exist, and, out of those laws, prove God."

And Opdyke nodded briefly, in token of his perfect comprehension.

THE END



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