The Brentons. Anna Chapin Ray
to say; but he hasn't. He's tongue-tied and unmagnetic at the best; what's more, he has learned too many things to let him flaunt abroad the old beliefs as battle standards. He's gone too far, and not far enough. His life is bound to be a miserable sort of compromise, a species of battledore and shuttlecock arrangement between the limits of the deep sea and the devil." And then the professor pulled himself up short. "Know him?" he queried curtly, as he lit his match.
Opdyke nodded.
"As one does know people one never meets out anywhere," he said.
"What do you mean by that?" The question was still curt.
"He waits at my joint."
"Of course. And?"
Opdyke laughed.
"How do you know there is an and, Professor?" he asked easily.
"Because I know you, and because I've heard of 'Reed's parson.' You're your father's own son, Reed. You never could get a starveling like Scott Brenton out of sight of your conscience. How much have you seen of him?"
"Not much." And Opdyke gave a few details.
The professor nodded thoughtfully. Then—
"See more," he ordered; "any amount more. You have time enough, you lazy young sinner, and I'll be answerable for all the consequences."
Opdyke yielded to his curiosity.
"What kind of consequences?"
"The inevitable kind that follow all you youngsters. Listen, boy. Brenton is a mixture of genius, and prig, and ignorant young hermit; or, rather, he has the elements all inside him, ready to be mixed. You'll have to do the mixing."
"I?" Opdyke looked startled. "Professor, what a beast of a bore!"
"No matter if it is. I believe in the conservation of all latent energy. Brenton's is all latent, and I count on you to do the conserving. I've been asking questions lately. From all accounts, you are the only man in college but myself who has taken the pains to get inside the poor beggar's shell."
"Hm. Well?" Opdyke's eyes were on the smoke in front of him; but, to the older man, it was plain that he was listening intently.
"Now you've got to go to work to get him out of his shell, so that people can see what he is like and, more than that, so that he can find out what people really are. He has no more knowledge of humanity than a six-months puppy; in fact, he hasn't so much. And—he's—got—to—learn." The words came weightily.
"What's the good?" Opdyke asked lazily.
The reply was unexpected, even to him who knew Professor Mansfield's downright ways.
"To teach him what an ass he really is. Till he finds that out—till you all find it out about yourselves, there's not much hope for any of you."
Opdyke flushed.
"Thanks," he said a little shortly.
Bending across the table, the old professor laid a friendly hand upon his arm.
"Don't be huffy, Reed. A few of you take in the knowledge with your mother's milk. That's what saves society, by marking it off into separate classes, what makes the difference between your father's son, and the strenuous scion of fifty ministerial Wheelers. But, because you've already got it, you owe all the more to the poor chaps who haven't."
"Yes, sir." Opdyke's reply came with dutiful promptness, although it was plain to the professor that he had flown quite beyond the limits of the young mind before him. "What do you want me to do with him, though?"
The professor's eyes twinkled, as he dragged himself back to the practical aspects of the case.
"Coax him out of his shell. If he won't come, then haul him out by the ears. Have him in your room and have some other men in there to meet him. Take him about with you. Take him to Mory's, on a thick night there. Show him life, the way you know it. If you must, show him an occasional siren. I can say this to you, Reed, because I have taken pains to find out that your sirens are pretty decent ones, cleaner than most of them. To sum it up, let Scott Brenton see life as you are living it, not as he imagines it from the point of view of the man who never can do anything but sit back in a corner and look on."
Opdyke filled his pipe anew, puffed at it silently, then spoke.
"Beastly tantalizing thing to do," he said. "What in thunder is the use?"
The professor spoke with sudden fervour.
"Much!" he said. "At least, it will teach him, when he's preaching for the Lord, to remember that Mammon isn't always quite so black as he is painted."
And so, on top of Reed Opdyke's other interests, Professor Mansfield laid the burden of Scott Brenton's worldly training. In pointing out the need of it to Opdyke, however, the old professor had been by no means as downright as he seemed. From above his lecture notes and his blowpipes, he kept keen eyes upon the members of his classes. Watching Scott steadily, in those days which followed upon the boy's bitter disappointment, he had seen new lines graving themselves about his lips, lines of decision now, not of worried mal-nutrition, lines that too easily might shape themselves to wilfulness. Scott, recluse that he had been, had also been as steady as a deacon; but the old professor realized that a reaction might come at almost any instant. One outlet, and that the highest one, forbidden him, he might seek other, lower ones in sheer bravado. Forbidden to climb into the Tree of Knowledge of all Good, he might, in revenge, fall greedily upon the Apples of Sodom. Left to himself, no one knew what harpies he might chance upon as comrades, nor what sights they might show him. To prevent all that, to provide him with an outlet which should be as wholesome as it was fresh and sparkling, the professor had given him into the safe hands of Reed Opdyke. It was as he said: he was quite well aware that, although Reed had his sirens, they all were curiously clean ones; in short, that his young Mammon was nobler far than many a senile God.
CHAPTER SIX
As a matter of course, Catie came to Scott's commencement. Had she answered sincerely to any questions put to her, she would have confessed to a two-fold purpose: the showing off of her proprietorship in Scott, and the showing off of her pair of new frocks, the most elaborate achievements as yet attempted by the village dressmaker. It must be confessed, however, that Catie found both of these deeds a little disillusioning. Scott was so busy in so many ways that he seemed to Catie to spare her only the smaller fragments of his time; and her two new gowns, which at home had been tried on amid the plaudits of the girl friends bidden to the private view, sank into insignificance beside the round dozen or more frocks which each of the other commencement guests was wearing in bewildering succession. To be sure, Catie's gowns had the most trimming on them; but her satisfaction in that fact was somewhat modified by the discovery that all her trimming was running the wrong way.
Nevertheless, Catie enjoyed some happy hours, despite the chilling disappointment of finding her frocks inadequate. It would have been nicer, of course, not to discover too late that she lacked the proper gown for any especial function; nicer to have seen herself, as she saw some other girls, girls not nearly so pretty as herself, attended, not by one swain only, but surrounded by a laughing, eager dozen. Still, there were compensations, chaperons among them. Catie's expressed regrets were wholly perfunctory, whenever Mrs. Brenton confessed that she was tired and needed to lie down.
For Mrs. Brenton also had come to Scott's commencement which, to her mind, was the crowning event of her own lifetime. Not only that, but somehow or other she had squeezed out the money to buy herself a new black silk gown, the first one since her marriage, more than twenty years before. Moreover, in deference to the prevailing styles, she explained to Scott on her way up from the station, she had had it made to hook up in the back above a little black lace tucker. Scott, as a matter of course, did not know a tucker from a turnip. None the less, he nodded his approval. That same evening, he confessed