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Nevertheless, he recognized all that it might portend when such a girl as Olive Keltridge, the soul of sanity and downrightness, talked about her comprehension of a man like Brenton. Moreover, Opdyke was no gossip. Nevertheless, he had not failed to hear a certain amount of speculation as to the possibilities of Brenton's seeking a divorce. Sought, there was no question of his getting it.
Ramsdell met the smile with impenetrable gravity. None the less, a look in the tail of his eye set Opdyke wondering whether, indeed, the message from the doctor was quite the accident it seemed. "Send him up, of course, Ramsdell. Doctor Keltridge is too busy a man to be kept waiting," he said briefly. To his extreme surprise, Katharine took the hint and rose. "And I must go, Mr. Opdyke.
"What have you been eating?" Doctor Keltridge demanded briefly. "Eating!" Scott Brenton's voice was as blank as were his eyes. "Yes, eating," the doctor iterated. "Doubts are generally more or less digestive in their origin. Caviar would have made a total agnostic of Saint John himself, and Saint Luke would have been the first one to tell him so, and order a blue pill."
The doctor's hand, leaving the wrist, came to rest upon the nearer shoulder with a grip which was like a benediction. "It has been a fearful time of waiting. I wish I could tell you what the end will be; but Reed, I can't." "You mean you won't," Opdyke corrected him a little sharply. But Doctor Keltridge forgave the sharpness, as his eyes rested on the drawn, white face.
It would have shocked him unspeakably, had it dawned upon him that Doctor Keltridge, within himself, was applying profane adjectives to the spiritual doubtings of his rector. It would have astounded him beyond all words, had he known how trivial to the doctor's seasoned mind had seemed his own juggling touch upon the rival claims of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Brenton did sit down, the while he suppressed a vague question regarding the filial nature of the word absurdities. Then he yielded to the merriment in Olive's eyes, and laughed outright and boyishly. "I've heard something of the sort already, Miss Keltridge," he confessed. "What was it, this time?" For an instant, Olive paused, astonished at the change which had come over her companion.
And most of the names I find are so trite." "Likewise the characters," Dolph Dennison assured him, sotto voce. Dolph, by way of his older brother, who was vestryman, might be termed sub-ecclesiastical. However, in any case, he would have been sure of a seat at the Keltridge dinner, even if all the other guests had been archbishops.
It was a month or two before he asked that question of Doctor Eustace Keltridge; but, in the end, it was bound to come. Whatever a man in Brenton's position might think inside himself, professionally he must talk of Providence, and of divine dispensations, and of all the rest of his ecclesiastical stock in trade.
The resolution had been growing up in her for weeks; it had come to its climax, only that very morning, when she had met Ramsdell on the Opdyke steps. "How is Mr. Opdyke?" she had queried. Then she had caught her breath at Ramsdell's answer. "Rather poorly, Miss Keltridge." She cast a hasty glance upward, to assure herself that Reed's windows were not open.
I'll be hanged, though, if she gets that nose of hers inside Reed Opdyke's room." "I wonder," Olive rested her elbows on the table, and spoke down at her interlaced fingers; "wonder why it is we both of us dislike her so." "I've been her doctor," Doctor Keltridge observed, as if that one fact were sufficient explanation. "But she must have lucid intervals." "Precious few," the doctor growled.
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