The Brentons

by Anna Chapin Ray

There came a short silence. Then Dolph spoke, not angrily, yet with decision.

"Olive, I think I am just a little bit ashamed of you for that. I'm willing to be a fatalist, and say it was ordained from the beginning that Opdyke must be flayed and hung up for the crows of time to pick; but as for saying in a hushed voice that he is the especial object of some wholly beneficent and divine plan, I can't do it, and I won't. A thing like that would be enough to leave a trail of beastliness over the whole mass of revealed religion; in the end it would turn one to a veritable pagan. Is this the entrance to your bargain counter? Good bye, then. And, for heaven's sake, remember that sometimes the personal hurt of a thing may blind a man to the ultimate and underlying beneficence of the plan that knocked him over. Watch Opdyke, not when he is swearing picturesquely, but when his mouth shuts and gets white around the corners with the mental pain, not the physical; and then you will take in what I mean." And Dolph, his face uncommonly grave and overcast, nodded shortly and went on his way, his fists stuffed into his pockets and his grim face half buried in his cavernous collar.

And, meanwhile, the poor "puffic' fibbous" lay and fidgetted uneasily, while he wondered why Olive Keltridge had chosen that day, of all days, to delay her customary call. She was not ill. Ramsdell, his nurse, had seen her pass the house, that morning, walking with the swift, alert step which Opdyke knew so well, the step that, in the old days, had accompanied his boyish explorations of every by-path in the region. No; something had detained her. She would surely be in later; and Reed strained his ears, hour after hour, to listen for the buzz of the front-door bell.

At last it buzzed, and the long form relaxed its stiffening. Half past five! That meant the shortest possible time for talk. Still, it would be better than nothing; the half-loaf would keep him from going hungry to bed. His eyes were eager, as he watched the door. Then the eagerness went out of them. The door swung open. Not Olive, but Prather, the fussy little novelist, came in. Opdyke's lean fingers shut savagely upon the rug that covered him. It would have been a relief if he could have torn it into tatters.

Later, that night, after Ramsdell had shunted him back into bed, and had covered him up as carefully as one covers a six-months baby, and had put the room in order for the night, and then had uttered his nightly query if that was "really hall, sir," left to himself, Reed Opdyke set out to become very philosophical as concerned his predicament. He merely succeeded in becoming very conscious of his utter, aching loneliness, the loneliness which only comes to those suddenly deprived of action.

Of course, he acknowledged to himself, a man of his training and experience ought to have untold possibilities of interest inherent in himself. He ought to be able to dip a bucket into his brain, and pull it up, dripping with all sorts of new and amusing thoughts which should keep him brilliant company for hours and hours. He ought to be able to lose the consciousness of the narrow present in the wide sweep of his past memories. He ought to be able to blockade his mind to any speculations as concerned his future usefulness by raising up a perfect barricade of past memories, and then by sitting down on top of the barricade and gloating because it was a little higher than that upbuilt by the next man.

Moreover, when those purely personal interests failed him, if purely personal interests did ever fail a man, he had only to summon Ramsdell and set him to reading aloud to him. To be sure, Ramsdell had a trick of chopping up his sentences into separate words, as the primary-school child spells its words by separate letters. Still, if it destroyed somewhat of the sense, it at least increased the interest, since only the most profound attention could discover the pith of any paragraph, when every syllable in that paragraph was uttered with the same deliberate stress.

And then there was his father. To Opdyke's certain knowledge, the good professor curtailed by hours and hours and hours his more congenial occupations for the sake of helping his son to work out the chess problems in which they both were taking a perfunctory delight. Reed did unfeignedly enjoy his father's company; but that was no reason he should reduce him to a captivity akin to his own. How long had it lasted, anyhow? May, June—nine months. And, in all that time, Olive never had missed, until to-day.

Opdyke made a wry face at the darkness. So he had come back to that, after all the fuss. What a kid he was, despite his six-feet three, and the time he had gone under the knife, unwincing, but fully conscious, because his heart was weak just then and the doctors were afraid of anæsthetics! Afterwards, when the affair was safely over, they had said things about his pluck. And now here he was, bewailing his fate because Olive had, just the once, failed to put in her appearance for her daily call. Pluck be hanged! And Olive had been wonderfully loyal, all these months. Knowing her popularity abroad and her busy life at home, he could not fail to be aware, when he stopped to think about it, that she must have given up any amount of pleasanter engagements, for the simple sake of coming to see him.

What made her do it, anyway? Liking? Conscience?