The Brentons

by Anna Chapin Ray

Saint Peter's Parish was fifteen miles and a consequent half-hour of time from the nearest fount of Christian Science teaching. Hence it resulted that only rarely had Katharine been used to refresh herself in the tenets of her new theology. In part, this came from her natural self-reliance, coupled with an indolence which made her shrink from the needful effort to catch an early train. In part, it came out of Brenton's heedful planning. Regretting, as he could not fail to do, his wife's allegiance to a creed so alien to the shreds of his own belief, not daring to oppose her absolutely in its observance, he contrived to strew her path with the accumulated petty obstacles which are so much more insurmountable than any single great one. He never set back the hands of the clock to make her miss her train; neither did he lock her in her room. He merely found out at the last minute that he needed one of the small personal services which only a wife can give.

And Katharine, by the very nature of her new and optimistic creed, was powerless to stand out against him. Earlier, fathoming his purposes, she would have raged, have burst into a passion. Now she could only minister to him with an impassive calm, while, in her secret heart, she was piously commending him to the attention of the Universal Mind for discipline. Unhappily for Katharine, however, the Universal Mind appeared to be engaged in some other direction, and Brenton, for the present, was left to go scot free.

This had been the state of the case, ever since the early spring, and Katharine felt the private and personal fount of sanctity within her to be running dry. She was just making up her mind to break away at any cost, when a new complication arose in the person of the baby. Not that Katharine's devotion to her child would have led her to any especial sacrifice, however. Indeed, there was no need for that. The nurse had proved herself an efficient substitute in any normal crisis; and any abnormal one, Katharine believed, could be controlled as well by absent treatment as by present. Unhappily, Katharine had reckoned without taking into account either Brenton's wilful allegiance to the old-fashioned notions of disease, or the nurse's abject allegiance to the father of her puny charge.

For, as the time ran on, no one could deny that the child was puny, that his birthright of health was dwindling fast. And, while it dwindled, the heat came on, and then the stifling dog days. It was a season when the lustiest of children wilted with the damp, depressing heat; and the Brenton baby, never lusty, wilted with them. Katharine treated him with conscientious regularity; but dog days and consequent dysentery proved too strenuous a claim for her to fight alone, and more and more eagerly she longed for the succour of the nearest local representative of the Mother Church.

Nevertheless, the more she longed, the more she shrank from carrying into effect her longing. Three days before this time, Brenton had come in upon her, sitting beside the weazen child, her eyes on space, her lips moving in silent self-communion. Across the room, the nurse was sobbing into her handkerchief. Now and then, between her sobs, she lifted up her irate eyes to glare upon the placid face beside the little crib.

Brenton had asked a question. Before Katharine could answer, the nurse had cut in and given him a few facts: hours and amounts and consequent symptoms which she deemed disturbing. And then, in a voice which made a curious contrast to the agitation of the nurse, Katharine had urged them to wait, quiet, until she had put the little human creature, suffering from some hidden sin or lack of faith, into a more total communion with the Infinite, the Healer; had even begged them not to allow their ill-concealed doubts to delay the perfect cure.

The nurse, heedless of the Infinite, the Healer, had interposed with a few more facts; had pointed out that physical mal-nutrition can not be made good by a diet of compressed air, however theological that air may be. The baby needed, not the Infinite, but finite stimulants and predigested foods. It needed to be left in peace and quiet, not be stirred up to listen to what, in her increasing ire, the nurse termed mummery and flummery. As for sin, the poor baby wasn't the sinner. It hadn't gone and neglected its only son—

In mercy, less for the logic of the nurse and the consequent feelings of his wife, than for his own nerves, Brenton interrupted. Like most men between two women, he only made the matter infinitely worse. There was a discussion; then there were words. Then Brenton lost his temper and departed on his heels, leaving his wife, the nurse, and the fretful baby wailing aloud in a discordant trio. As a natural result, Katharine forgot the needs of the child and sought the healing contact of the All-Mind upon her own account, while the nurse, drying her tears in haste, seized the child in one arm, the opportunity in the other, and administered the simple remedies she always kept on hand. Brenton, meanwhile, sought Doctor Keltridge. Half an hour later, he was back again, the doctor by his side.

The old doctor, dragged helter-skelter from his laboratory, was in wildest disarray, and his eyes were still a little vague, as he followed Brenton up the stairs to the nursery. Across the threshold of the nursery, however, the vagueness vanished; the eyes grew keen as sharp-pointed bits of steel, yet strangely gentle, while he sat down beside the crib and laid one mammoth brown hand above the scrawny little claw. Then, for just a minute, the keen eyes narrowed to a line. A minute afterward, he looked up and smiled across at Brenton.

"Yes, the little chap is sick, this time; it is about as well you called me in. It's been a bad summer for the children; he's had to take his turn with the rest of them, and it has pulled him down. Poor little youngster!" And one huge forefinger gently hooked itself into the neck of the little gown, drew it away and disclosed the piteous leanness of the throat and chest beneath, the fragile leanness of the baby bird just fallen from the nest. "Poor little youngster!" he repeated. "He has had a hard time of it in this world. Sometimes it does seem as if they didn't start with quite a fair chance."