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"How does anybody know it, when more than half of himself is just so much dead matter; when the division line between the dead part and the alive doesn't move along by so much as one hair's breadth; when the dead part is dead past any resurrection? It is my body, Whittenden. I know it for a fact." There was no especial answer to be made. Whittenden had the superlative good sense to attempt none.
"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.
Afterwards, Ramsdell dismissed and sent off on an errand, Whittenden smoked, and Opdyke lay and watched him in a contented reverie too deep for words. As he had said to Brenton, once on a time, it was a relief to get even a bad matter out and over. Later, he was quite well aware, he would take up the subject with his friend once more; but the week was nearly all before them.
A man on his nerves is bound to talk to something, whether it's a responsible person like yourself, or a mere bedpost like me. It's the talking that's the main thing, the sense of exhilaration that comes with the discussion of depressing personalities. We're all alike, every man of us, Whittenden. Didn't I take my turn, last night?" "That's different." "Not a bit.
Unless we can contrive to break up the habit, in the end he will analyze himself into his original elements, and then abolish those." Reed laughed. Then he said slowly, "Poor beggar!" "Yes," Whittenden assented, with sudden gravity; "that is just it. Poor beggar! And now, the worst of it all is that, unless we break it up at once, it will have to run its course, like any other disease."
The raw young stripling had hoped all things; the mature, seemingly well-poised rector was having some little difficulty to prove them good. What was the matter, Whittenden asked himself. The ineradicable germs of pessimistic Calvinism? The uncongenial wife? Some lurking weakness in the man himself, that forbade his ever coming to a full content?
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.
Opdyke had a cold; and so it came about that Olive, dropping in, that morning, and hearing of the dilemma, offered to drive down to meet the guest. "You always were a comfort, Olive," Reed assured her gratefully. "You've a general-utility sort of disposition that seems to balk at nothing, and therefore we all impose upon you. Sure you don't mind? You can't miss Whittenden.
"Still, Reed, I rather grudge the time," Whittenden said to his host when, dinner over, that same night, he flung himself into a chair at Opdyke's side. "For all practical purposes, it was a wasted afternoon. I'd much rather have been here with you." "You'd have been quite de trop, old man. Olive Keltridge was here, two hours, and filled me up with all the gossip of the town.
Really," Brenton spoke with a blind optimism; "she was very popular. But, in the vital things one thinks and feels Whittenden, I don't imagine any woman ever really can share those things with us men. We are created different. We can't go inside each other's shells." And in that final utterance, it seemed to Whittenden, Scott Brenton voiced the saddest phase of all his present unbelief.
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