"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.