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Updated: June 27, 2025
It was a long time before either of the men spoke again. In the end, Whittenden broke the silence. "Brenton, I'd have given a good deal to have known your parents," he said. "To weigh me up?" Brenton smiled. "You saw my mother: a strong, self-reliant, self-willed character, threaded through and through with Calvinism. She was totally unselfish, yet totally self-centred.
I've been a beast to keep you up; still, it is a relief to have it out and over. Now go to bed. Before you go, though for now and then we all of us want something we can hang on to, and this is one of the times I don't mean to funk my own share in the main issue; but, Whittenden, before you go off to bed, would you mind just saying the Our Father?
"I know." Brenton nodded. "Where did you run across him?" "In Colorado. A cousin of his had lungs, and Whittenden put in his whole vacation, two years ago, helping the man keep from being too badly bored. We had an accident; a cage fell and smashed a dozen miners. Every single man of them was at the end of things, and they were Catholics. Most of them couldn't speak ten words of English.
"Well?" "Well." And Whittenden pulled himself up short. "This is where you begin to come in on the scene, you reprobate. I had just got him on his legs, marching sanely along, to the tune of 'All Thy works shall praise Thy name, when the doctors came lugging you home into his very parish, laid you down underneath his very nose.
There was no longer any hope of his recovery; that he knew of a surety, knew as, every now and then, one does know things unprovable. He had taken the knowledge pluckily, albeit it had told on him more than he would have been willing to confess. It would have told on him still more, though, had it not been for his week with Whittenden.
What else has gone upon your conscientious scruples?" "Most things, including a good share of the Thirty-Nine Articles," Brenton made curt answer. "Hm-m-m!" Whittenden said slowly. "That isn't quite as original as you may think for, Brenton. A good many of us others have employed that form of the phrase before.
Whittenden will come to wake you, and you can appear in your pajamas, if you choose. Isn't that all right, Whittenden? Good night, Ramsdell." Then, as Ramsdell vanished, Reed settled himself with a little sigh. "It's a fearsome responsibility, Whittenden," he said; "to win this sort of sheep-dog devotion.
Ramsdell, on my grilly days, would like nothing better than to stand and let me shy things at his head. It is beautiful; but it gets a trifle sultry. A little downright cussedness helps to clear the air occasionally; but cussèd is the one thing Ramsdell isn't. I suppose it is because he is the product of the ages; it goes with his misplaced aspirates." Whittenden struck a match.
The dark tide surged up across Scott Brenton's lean cheeks. "Perhaps," he assented curtly. "Still, Whittenden, it doesn't seem that way to me. I feel myself tied down at every point." "What ties you?" "Creeds." Then Brenton laughed a little harshly. "Doubts, rather." Whittenden looked him in the eyes. "What is it that you're doubting, Brenton?" he inquired. "Everything.
All the old landmarks of the ages," Brenton told him restively. Whittenden smiled. "You had parted with some of them, when I last said good bye to you," he reminded Brenton. "You had quenched the sulphurous flames, and explained the more surprising of the miracles. You even had a doubt about creation's having been achieved in one hundred and seventy hours.
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